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THE HISTORY OF 
FRENCH LITERATURE 

FROM THE OATH OF STRASBURG 
TO CHANTICLER 



BY 

ANNIE LEMP KONTA 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1910 







Copyright, 1909, bt 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published December, 1909 



©GI.A252959 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGES 

I. — The Middle Ages 1-12 

Origins of the French Language and Literature — Oath of 
Strassburg — Langue d'oc and Langue d'oil. 

II —Epics 13-32 

Jongleurs — Trouveres — Chansons de Geste — Chanson de Roland 
— Breton Cycle — Chrestien de Troyes. 

III.— Fabliaux 33-54 

Le Vilain Mire — Ysopets — Roman de Renart — Aucassin et 
Nicolette — Bibles — Dits — Legs — Fatraisies — Bestiaires — 
Lapidaires — Y olucraires — Roman de la Rose. 

IV. — Chronicles and History 55-62 

Villehardouin — Joinville — Froissart — Commines — Alain Char- 
tier. 

V. — The Theater in the Middle Ages .... 63-74 
Mysteres — Miracles — Confrerie de la Passion — Basoche — En- 
jants Sans Souci — Soties — Moralites — Farce — Farce du Cuvier 
— Farce de Maitre Pathelin. 

VI. — Lyric Poetry 75-91 

Chansons de Toile — Pastourelle — Troubadours — Sirventes — 
Tensons — Arnaut de Marveil — Bertrand de Born — Bernard de 
Ventadour — Arnaud Daniel — Guiraut de Borneil — Marcabrun. 

VII.— Popular Poetry 92-104 

Olivier Basselin — Vaux de Vire — Charles d'Orleans — Francois 
Villon — Petit Testament — Grand Testament. 

VIII.— The Renaissance 105-116 

Guillaume Bude — Robert and Henry Estienne — Calvin. 

V 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGES 

IX. — Sixteenth Century Writers 117-128 

Rabelais — Gargantua — Pantagruel — Amyot — Lives oj Plutarch 
— Montaigne — Essays . 

X. — Sixteenth Century Poetry and Prose . . . 129-149 
Marot — The P16iade — Ronsard — Regnier — Malherbe — Tragedy 
— Montchretien — Robert Gamier — Alexandre Hardy — Satire 
Menippee — Memoires — Montluc — La Noue — Brantome — 
D'Aubigne* — Aventures du Baron de Foeneste — Les Tragiques — 
Heptameron. 

XI. — The Seventeenth Century 150-165 

Hotel de Rambouillet — L'Astree — Pr£cieuses — Voiture — G. de 
Balzac — Scarron and the Burlesque Genre — Cyrano de Berge- 
rac — Foundation of the French Academy. 

XII.— Corneille 166-181 

Comedy and Tragedy. 

XIII. — Transition of Medieval Philosophy . . . 182-187 
Descartes. 

XIV.— Port-Royal 188-195 

Jansenism — Pascal — Lettres Provinciates — Pensees. 

XV.— The Classic French School 196-237 

Racine — Arguments of Andromaque, Britannicus, Berenice, 
Phedra, Bajazet, Esther, Athalie — Boileau — Epitres — Satires — 
UArt Poetique — Boileau's Influence — Moliere — The Man — The 
Writer — Arguments of Le Misanthrope, Tartuffe, Les Femmes 
Savantes, L'Avare — La Fontaine — The Man — The Contes and 
Fables. 

XVI.— La Chaire 238-251 

Bossuet, a Pillar of the Church — Funeral Orations and Other 
Notable Works — Bourdaloue — Fenelon — Telemaque — Flechier 
— Memoires sur les Grands Jours d'Auvergne — Massillon — 
Petit Careme — Grand Careme — Forensic Eloquence. 

XVII.— Le Siecle de Louis XIV 252-274 

The Great. Writers and Artists — Memoires — Mme. de Sevigne's 
Letters — Mme. de La Fayette — Zayde — La Princesse de Cleves 
— La Rochefoucauld's Maximes — Le Cardinal de Retz — La 
Bruyere — Les Caracteres — Saint-Simon's Memoires — Lafosse — 

vi 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGES 

Crebillon — Rhadamiste et Zenobie — Quinault — Rollin — Male- 
branche — J. B. Rousseau — Regnard — Dufresny — Dancourt — 
Le Sage — Turcaret — Gil Bias — Bayle — Fontenelle. 

XVIII. — The Eighteenth, or Philosophic, Century . 275-285 
Influence of English Writers — The Reign of the Favorites — 
The Salons of the Eighteenth Century — The Court of Sceaux — 
Mme. de Lambert — Mme. de Tencin — Mme. Geoff rin — Mme. 
du Deffand — Mme. d'Epinay — Mme. Necker — D'Holbach — 
Helvetius — Mme. Roland. 

XIX.— Voltaire 286-305 

Presented to Ninon de l'Enclos — His Early Productions — 
Voltaire in England — Voltaire at Cirey — Voltaire at the Court 
of Frederick of Prussia — Voltaire at Ferney — Voltaire in 
Private Life — Voltaire, the' Writer — Voltaire's Influence — Argu- 
ments of Zaire, Merope, Alzire, Mahomet. 

XX. — Montesquieu, Buffon, and Rousseau . . . 306-327 
Montesquieu — Lettres Persanes — Grandeur et Decadence des 
Romains — L' Esprit des Lois: Importance of this work — Buffon 
— Histoire Naturelle — Rousseau — Discours sur les Sciences, etc. 
— Discours sur VInegalite — Le Contrat Social — Emile — Julie, 
ou la Nouvelle Heloise — Confessions — Rousseau's Influence on 
Literature, Morals, and Politics. 

XXL— The Encyclopedists . . 328-334 

The Physiocrates — Diderot — D'Alembert — Baron Grimm — 
Condorcet. 

XXII. — Tragedy, Comedy, "Tearful" Drama, Poetry, 

The Novel 335-348 

Sedaine — Mercier — Lemercier — Baculard d'Arnaud — Beaumar- 
chais — Le Barbier de Seville — Le Mariage de Figaro — Marivaux 
— Destouches — La Chaussee — Prevost — Manon Lescaut — Gres- 
set — Vert-Vert — Piron — Lambert — Delille — Florian — 
Fables — Ecouchard Lebrun — Marmontel — Gilbert — Andre 
Chenier — Odes — Iambes — Bernardin de Saint-Pierre — Paul et 
Virginie. 

XXIII. — The Revolution and Its Literature . . 349-356 
Historical Review — Political Eloquence and Pamphlets — 
Mirabeau — Chamf ort — Camille Desmoulins — The Theater 
Songs — Marie Joseph Chenier — Vincent Arnault — J. B. Legouve 

vii 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGES 

— La Harpe — Ducis — Collin d'Harleville — Fabre d 'Eglantine — 
Ca Ira — La Carmagnole — La Marseillaise. 

XXIV. — The Nineteenth Century 357-369 

Goethe's Influence — Reaction in Literature — Chateaubriand — 
Le Genie du Christianisme — Atala — Rene — Les Martyrs — Me- 
mories d'Outre-Tombe — Mme. de Stael — Delphine — Corinne — 
De VAllemagne — Mme. Recamier. 

XXV.— The Romanticists \ 370-391 

Lamartine — Histoire des Girondins — Meditations Poetiques — 
Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses — Jocelyn — Victor Hugo — 
The Dramatist — Arguments of Hernani, Ruy Bias — The Novel- 
ist — Notre Dame de Paris — Les Miserables — The Poet — Les 
Orientales — Les Feuilles d'Automne — Les Chants du Crepuscule 
— Les Chdtiments — La Legende des Siecles — Alfred de Musset — 
Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie — Poesies Nouvelles — Comedies et 
Proverbes — Andre del Sarto — La Confession d'un Enfant du 
Siecle — Alfred de Vigny — Poemes Antiques et Modernes — Les 
Destinees — Cinq-Mars — Chatterton — Casimir Delavigne — Les 
Messeniennes — Louis XI — Les Vepres Siciliennes — Theophile 
Gautier — Emaux et Camees — Le Capitaine Fracasse — Les Gro- 



XXVI. — The Humorists and the Satirists . . . 392-400 
Charles Nodier — Xavier de Maistre — Voyage autour de ma 
Chambre — Toepffer — La Bibliothcque de mon Oncle — Nouvelles 
Genevoisses — Alphonse Karr — Les Guepes — Beranger — Paul 
Louis Courier — Pamphlet des Pamphlets — Auguste Barbier — 
Iambes. 

XXVIL— The Modern Novel 401-416 

Idealistic Fiction: George Sand — The Three Periods of her 
Literary Career — Rural Life Sketches: La Mare du Diable — 
Alexandre Dumas pere — Les Trois Mousquetaires — Monte 
Cristo — Frederic Soulie — Memoires du Diable — Eugene Sue — 
Le Juif Errant — Paul de Kock — Hector Malot — Sans Famille — 
George Ohnet — Le Maitre de Forges — Octave Feuillet — Le 
Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre — Julia de Trecoeur — M. de 
Camors — Saintine — Picciola — Henri Monnier — Memoire de M. 
Joseph Prudhomme — Edmond About — La Grece Contemporaine 
— LeRoi des Montagues — Erckmann-Chatrian — Madame Therese 

viii 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGES 

— VAmi Fritz — Emile Souvestre — Un Philosophe sous les 
Toits — Jules Verne — Voyage au Centre de la Terre — Henry 
Greville — Dosia — Victor Cherbuliez — Le Comte Kostia — Andre 
Theuriet — Le Chemin du Bois — Mademoiselle Guignon — Pierre 
Loti — Pecheur d'Islande — Mon Frere Yves — Anatole France — 
Le Crime de Sylveslre Bonnard — Jules Lemaitre — Contes — Les 
Rois. 

XXVIII —The Realistic Novel 417-433 

Balzac — La Comedie Humaine — Merimee — Colomba — Stendhal 
— La Chartreuse de Parme — Le Rouge et le Noir — Flaubert — 
Madame Bovary — Salammbo — Trois Contes — Edmond and 
Jules de Goncourt — Alphonse Daudet — Lettres de mon Moulin 
— Fromont Jeune et Risler Aine — Numa Roumestan — Tartarin. 

XXIX.— The Naturalistic Novel . . . . . 434-443 
Emile Zola— Les Rougon-Macquart — Guy de Maupassant — 
Short Tales — Pierre et Jean — Une Vie — Huysmans — La-Bas — 
En Route — Marcel Prevost — Frederique — Lea — The Psycholog- 
ical Novel — Edouard Rod — U Inutile Effort — Les Trois Cceurs 
— Paul Bourget — Le Disciple — L'Etape — Paul Margueritte — La 
Force des C hoses — Maurice Barres — J. H. Rosny — Ferdinand 
Fabre — L'Abbe Tigrane — Jules Renard — Willy — Leon Daudet 
— Jules Claretie — Ecole Naturiste — G. de Bouhelier — The 
Novel of the Provinces — Moselly — Terres Lorraines — J. Ageor- 
ges — Capdeville — Pierre Vernon — Rene* Bazin — La Terre Qui 
Meurt — Le Ble Qui Live — Paul Arene — Au Bon Soleil. 

XXX.— Recent Poetry 444-449 

The Parnassiens — Leconte de Lisle — Baudelaire — Sully-Prud- 
homme — Jos6-Maria de Heredia — Francois Copp6e — The De- 
cadents or Symbolists — Verlaine — Mallarme — De Regnier — 
Jean Moreas — Maeterlinck — Other Poets — Richepin — Rostand 
— Mistral. 

XXXI.— Philosophers 450-456 

Lamennais — Paroles d'un Croyant — Le Livre du Peuple — De 
Bonald — Legislation Primitive — Victor Cousin — Du Vrai, du 
Beau, et du Bien — Royer-Collard — Auguste Comte — Cours de 
Philosophie Positive — Joubert — Pensees — Renan — Histoire des 
Origines du Christianisme — Taine — De V Intelligence — Philoso- 
phie de VArt. 

ix 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAOR8 

XXXII.— Historians 457-462 

De Barante — Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne — Thierry — Rccits 
des Temps Merovingiens — Guizot — Histoire Generate de la Civil- 
isation en Europe — Thiers — Histoire du Consulat et de V Empire 
— Mignet — Histoire de la Revolution Francaise — Michelet — 
Histoire de France — De Tocqueville — La Democratic en Ameri- 
que — Fustel de Coulanges — La Cite Antique — Lanfrey — His- 
toire de Napoleon — Henri Martin — Histoire de France — Mme. de 
R6musat — Memoires — Due de Broglie — Albert Sorel — Thureau- 
Dangin — Ernest Lavisse. 

XXXIII.— Critics 463-467 

Predecessors of Sainte-Beuve — Saint-Beuve — Portraits Litttr- 
aires — Causeries du Lundi — Scherer — Anatole France — La Vie 
Litteraire — Jules Lemaitre — Les Contemporains — Brunetiere — 
devolution des Genres, etc. — Faguet. 

XXXIV.— The Modern Drama 468-496 

Sardou — Dumas fils — Augier — Scribe — Ponsard — Autran — De 
Bornier — Richepin — Delphine Gay — Labiche — Gondinet — 
Pailleron — Meilhac and Halevy — Henri Becque — Theatre 
Libre — De Curel — Brieux — Ancey — Courteline — Lavedan — 
Hervieu — Maeterlinck — Rostand — Chanticler — Bernstein, etc. 

XXXV.— The French Press 497-518 

The Origin of Newspapers — French Journals — French Periodi- 



APPENDIX 519-523 

The Forty Immortals of the French Academy — Rulers of 
France. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 524-529 

INDEX 531-565 



THE HISTORY 
OF FRENCH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER I 



ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 

/ 

With the conquest of Gaul by Caesar (58-51 B.C.) there 
began an intricate process of evolution which, continuing for 
more than nine centuries, finally gave birth to a French lan- 
guage and literature. The humble Sequence of St. Eulalie 
—fragment of a Latin church chant— and the historical 
Oath of Strasburg, sworn in French by Louis the Ger- 
manic to make it intelligible to the Franks of Charles the 
Bald, are but the embryo of what that language and literature 
came to be. But at the end of the tenth century, when the 
Capetian dynasty began to establish its sway and to consum- 
mate French unity, there arose a French national life, and 
with it a genuine national language and literature. In France, 
as elsewhere, poetry preceded prose in the infancy of let- 
ters; and we see those poetic beginnings in a brief composi- 
tion on the Passion of Christ, and in the three hundred ver- 
ses of the Life of St. Leger, the earliest regularly versified 
document in French. Our own taste does not find much to 
admire in this Life. Yet in its meager thread of narra- 
tion, in its simple, dry precision— like to that of a bare chron- 
icle—we perceive the earliest strivings of that intense creative 
power which has produced French literature, and has by no 
means exhausted itself in a thousand pregnant years of pro- 
duction. 

When their country was reduced to the status of a Roman 
province by Caesar, the Gauls, inferior to the Romans in civil- 
ization, had the Latin language imposed upon them— just as 
2 1 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

French, by a natural process, is forced upon the Arabs of 
Algeria. 

The Latin brought to Gaul by the Roman soldiers and 
rustic colonists was not the classic tongue of Cicero and Virgil. 
At Rome, as in France to-day, there existed two languages, 
that of the educated and that of the peasant : the literary Latin 
of writers and scholars, and the vulgar Latin of the people. 
The popular Latin of the Gauls, the Gallo-Roman, as it was 
called after having supplanted the Celtic and having been 
subjected to a strong influence from the idioms brought in 
by the Germanic conquerors, was a language very different 
from the classic or literary Latin. It is called Lingua 
Romana l by present-day philologists in contradistinction to 
the literary Latin (sermo eruditus). With the Gallo-Roman 
language, which was spoken but not written, there was 
evolved a sort of literary Latin written by people more or less 
ignorant, in which constant grammatical errors are apparent. 
This was called the low Latin (has latin). 

The French language is not a mixture of Gallic and 
Latin but the popular Latin (sermo plebeius) introduced into 
Gaul by the Roman soldiers, just as, in the same manner, the 
Roman language was brought into the various other provinces 
of Rome, suppressing the indigenous dialects and, with vari- 
ous influences brought to bear upon it, evolving the Romance 
or neo-Latin languages. 

France, Italy, and a large part of Germany were united 
by Charlemagne. But these three countries were distinct in 
customs, ideas, and especially in language. So it is not sur- 
prising that this vast empire, no longer held together by his 
genius, soon began to fall apart under his weak successors. 
Each of his three grandsons— Charles the Bald, Louis the 
Germanic, and Lothair— took his share, though only after 
bloody fratricidal wars— thus bringing to pass for the first 
time the complete political division of France, Germany, and 
the contested land of Lotharingia. The text of the solemn 
oath sworn by Louis and Charles, at a critical moment of the 
conflict, pledging them to mutual aid against Lothair, has 

1 Some of the Latin writers of Gaul were: Apollinaris Sidonius, Trogus 
Pompejus, and Sulpicius Severus. 



ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE 

been preserved. Aside from its historical interest, the final 
separation of France and Germany, it possesses a very special 
linguistic value. It was in March, 842, that Louis swore the 
oath in French, Charles in German, for the understanding 
of their respective armies. This document, which (not yet 
French, but no longer Latin) invites the closest scrutiny for 
the study it affords of a language in transition, is thus quoted 
by the historian, Nithard : * 

Oath of Louis the Germanic 

OLD FRENCH MODERN FRENCH 

Pro Deo amur et pro Christian Pour l'amour de Dieu et pour 
poblo et nostro commun salva- le salut commun du peuple chr&- 
ment, d'ist di in avant, in quant tien et le notre, a partir de ce jour 
Deus savir et podir me dunat, si autant que Dieu m'en donne le 
salvarai eo cist meon fradre savoir et le pouvoir, je soutien- 
Karlo et in adjudha et in cad- drai mon frere Charles de mon 
huna cosa, si cum om per dreit aide et en toute chose, comme on 
son fradra salvar dift, in o quid il doit justement soutenir son frere, 
mi altresi fazet, et ab Ludher nul a condition qu'il m'en fasse 
plaid nunquam prindrai, qui autant, et je ne prendrai jamais, 
meon vol cist meon fradre Karlo avec Lothaire aucun arrange- 
in damno sit. ment, qui, par ma volont£, soit au 

detriment de mon dit frere 

Charles. 

English : For the love of God and for the common salvation 
of the Christian people and our own : from this day on, in so 
far as God give me knowledge and power, I shall save (sup- 
port) my brother Charles, by assistance and in each thing (on 
all occasions), as one ought by right save his brother, in so 
far as he will do the same thing to me; and from Lothair 
shall I never take a pledge which may, by my will, be a 
damage to this my brother Charles. 

The declaration of the soldiers of Charles's army furnishes 
another interesting document of incipient French in its un- 
settled orthography: 

1 Grandson of Charlemagne and one of the oldest French chroniclers'. 

3 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

OLD FRENCH MODERN FRENCH 

Si Lodhuwigs sagrament que Si Louis tient le serment qu' a 

son fradre Karlo jurat conservat, son frere Charles il jure et Charles 

et Karlus meos sendra de sua mon seigneur de sa part ne le 

part non lo stanit, si jo returnar tient pas, si je ne Ten puis 

non lint pois, ne jo, ne neuls d^tourner, ni moi ni nul que j'en 

cui eo returnar int pois in nulla puisse detourner, en nulle aide 

adjudha contra Ludowig nun li contre Louis ne lui y serai, 
iv er. 

English: If Louis keeps the oath which he swears to his 
brother Charles, and Charles, my lord, on his part, does not 
keep it, and if I cannot turn him from it, neither I nor any 
other can turn him from it, I shall give no aid to him against 
Louis. 

This language, crude and imperfect as it still was, repre- 
sents a gradual evolution through nine centuries. The Can- 
tilene or Sequence de Sainte-Eulalie, the oldest poetic monu- 
ment of the French (from a manuscript of the Convent Saint 
Armand in Valenciennes), written only fifty years later, 
already shows a striking contrast to the Oath, because it 
is entirely French in character, and contains the fully de- 
veloped article. It speaks of the martyrdom of Saint Eulalie 
of Merida, in 304, who under Maximianus, co-ruler of Diocle- 
tian, died for her faith : 

Buona pulcella fut Eulalie 
Bel avret corps, bellezour anima, 
Voldrent la veintre li deo inimi 
Voldrent la faire diaule servir. 1 

But, as in the various regions of the vast Roman Empire, 
various languages were evolved from the Latin amongst the 
different peoples, owing to the imperceptible influence of 
clime and race, perhaps even through the subtle variations 
in structure of the vocal organs— so in France a variety of 
dialects found their way from the Pyrenees northward, and 
from the Alps to the sea— each one having points of contact 

x A virtuous maiden was Eulalie, beautiful of mind and body; the 
enemies of God wished to vanquish her and make her serve the devil. 

4 



ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE 

with, and divergences from, its neighbor. These dialects fall 
into two general groups or languages— the langue d'oc or 
language of Southern France usually designated as south of 
the Loire, and the langue d'o'il, language of Northern France, 
north of the Loire. Thus the original Roman province of 
Gaul, and the large basin of the Garonne— almost one half of 
France, in fact, did not speak French, and did not in the 
Middle Ages produce any French literature. Hence the rich 
and interesting literary expressions of the langue d'oc, flour- 
ishing though it did on French territory, has no place here ; 
only in so far as those productions exercised a marked influ- 
ence upon French literature proper are we concerned with 
them. Beyond this they have been afforded a separate liter- 
ary treatment in a succeeding chapter. 

The bizarre names, oc and oil, originated in a custom 
of the Middle Ages, which designated languages by the par- 
ticle of affirmation. The people of Southern France used oc 
(from the Latin hoc), and those of Northern France oil (from 
the Latin hoc Me, which was contracted into oil), to express 
" yes." Thus also the Italian was called the language of si, 
and the German the language of ja. Dante in his Be vulgari 
eloquentia sive idiomate, says that the language of oil puts 
forward its claim to be ranked above those of oc and si (Pro- 
vencal and Italian). 

The language of the North, the langue d'o'il, was in the 
eleventh century divided into five groups, or principal dia- 
lects, the boundaries of which were not accurately defined : the 
dialects of the Northeast, the Picard and the Wallon; of 
the Northwest, the Normand; of the East, the Bourguignon, 
the Franc-Comtois, the Lorrain, and the Champenois; of the 
West, the Poitevin, the Angevin, and the Saintongeais; of the 
Centre (in the He de France) the Frangais (French). Origi- 
nally all these dialects might have been of equal standing, 
each sovereign in its own domain. As a literary instrument 
no one of them was inherently superior to any other: the 
employment of a certain one in a literary work or document 
might reveal simply the origin of the writer. This equal 
power and influence remained as long as there was no single 
center of Government— no capital of the nation to impose 
upon the whole country the need of a paramount language. 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The dukes of Normandy or Burgundy, equal to the Capetian 
Kings, humble lords of the He de France, used in their official 
acts the dialects of their respective provinces. 

But early in the twelfth century, the petty kings of the 
He de France began to profess the doctrine of " manifest 
destiny ' ' by benevolently assimilating their neighbors. Gradu- 
ally, they annexed Berry (1101), Picardy (1200), Touraine 
(1203), Normandy (1204), and Champagne (1361). x Into 
these provinces they took the dialect of the He de France, 
which being the language of kings, was presently adopted as a 
model by cultivated society. Only the common people, averse 
to such invasion, refused to accept French, and clung to their 
old dialects. Thus the dialects of Picardy, Burgundy, and 
Normandy, fell from their high estate as the medium of litera- 
ture to the lowly one of patois — that is to say, an idiom neither 
written nor spoken by educated people, and the end of the 
century found the French dialect of the He de France pre- 
dominating, strengthened by the definite establishment of 
royal supremacy over the feudal lords and the fixation of 
Paris (owing to its university) as the intellectual center of 
the country. But it was not until the fourteenth century, 
when dialect after dialect had given way to the dominant one 
—the French of the He de France— thai its triumph was com- 
plete and the French language took its place in history. The 
patois still spoken in Normandy, Picardy, and Burgundy, are 
not, therefore — contrary to popular belief — literary French 
corrupted in the mouths of peasants, but simply the remnants 
of the ancient provincial dialects. 

Meanwhile, at the south of the Loire, the langue d'oc also 
had become almost extinct. The terrible crusade against the 
Albigenses (so called from Albi, in Languedoc, where the 
antisacerdotal sects were dominant), was not only a remark- 
able religious and political occurrence, but one of great liter- 
ary significance as well. With one stroke it carried the 
French language clear to the Pyrenees and the Mediterra- 
nean; for when the Albigenses (Albigeois) revolted against 
the Church of Rome, they were so vigorously opposed that, as 

1 These dates are not, of course, those of final annexation to the French 
crown. 



ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE 

sects, they disappeared in great part at the end of the thir- 
teenth century. A crusade against them was preached by 
Pope Innocent III, in 1208, and was led by Arnold of Citeaux 
and Simon de Montfort. This war of extermination, lasting 
for several years, was one of the bloodiest in history. 

In 1272 Languedoc was incorporated in France, and the 
langue d'oc ceased to be written, and degenerated into patois. 
The Limousin, Provencal, Languedocien, and Gascon patois, 
persisting to-day in the respective provinces of Southern 
France, are merely the fragments of that glorious language 
which shone so bright at the time of the troubadours. The 
dialect of Catalonia was nearly identical with the langue d'oc 
—a similarity so complete indeed, that Catalonian, though 
spoken beyond the Pyrenees assumed the name of Limousin 
(Lemosi). The language of the South was more sonorous 
than that of the North. The very names of the poets— in the 
South, troubadours; in the North, trouveres (relating to the 
same French verb trouver) — indicate the characteristic varia- 
tions in the two chief idioms. 

The study of French origins takes us into the Middle 
Ages. 1 To estimate aright their value with respect to this 
period, we may profitably consider the opinions put forth by 
the eminent Romance scholar and critic, Gaston Paris. "We 
have outgrown," he says, "our attitude of disrespect for the 
Middle Ages. Time was when French scholarship sought its 
sources only in antiquity, or from its own more immediate 
learning; and when the 'Dark Ages' were significant simply 
as a stage of transition— essential to continuity, perhaps, but 
merely as a ring of lead that binds two chains of gold. But 
nowadays, science repudiates no period of history. Wherever 
it finds facts and laws, it pauses. It holds that all things that 
have existed deserve its attention ; as far as possible, it strives 
to imitate the vast and serene impartiality of nature." 

During this period of fermentation and social reconstruc- 
tion, a new state had sprung up by the combination of Roman, 
German, and Christian institutions. The feudal system pre- 

1 From the Fall of the Roman Empire, 475, until the capture of Con- 
stantinople by Mahomet II, 1453, may be conveniently and with reason 
regarded as such. 

7 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

vailed and the two great powers of western Europe were the 
pope and the emperor. 

In the hands of Augustin Thierry and his successors the 
history of the Middle Ages has become alive. These centuries 
are an epoch essentially poetic, that is to say, everything is 
spontaneous, original, unforeseen. The men of that time do 
not give to reflection the place it occupies in modern life. 
They do not observe themselves; they live naively, like chil- 
dren with whom reflected life developed by civilization has 
not yet stifled the free expansion of natural vitality. They 
have neither in the physical nor in the social world that idea 
of prearranged regularity which our reasoning power has 
given us. Undoubtedly, reason is the sovereign and ruling 
faculty, and its possession must be the highest aim of our 
efforts. But it is not poetry; it is too often its negation. 
Pure reason is an elevated region, serene and cold, like those 
grand summits where an eternal whiteness reflects a sun with- 
out clouds; life, with its forms and its colors, its songs and 
fragrances, its powerful and joyous disorder, is in lower 
regions. The older we grow, men or nations, the more does 
reason expel the imagination within us. A great critic of our 
days (Villemain) has said, "There exists in three fourths of 
men a poet who died young, and whom the grown man sur- 
vives. ' ' 

Taken as a whole and compared with ours, life in the 
Middle Ages appears eminently poetic. Literature was the 
image of this life. It has the same liberty, frankness, variety. 
It is not, like ours, hedged in by laws, restrained by preju- 
dices or proprieties, or directed by classical examples ; nothing 
prevents it from saying plainly and entirely what it wants 
to say. Above all, it is true ; and that is its great merit. Un- 
preoccupied with rules, theories, questions of form, it ex- 
presses simply the emotions of the soul, the real sentiments 
and ideas of all. The public accepts it as the poet sings it. 
One does not criticise; one does not seek to discern whether 
a poem is well composed, original, correct in its versification 
—or whether a play ("mystery") conforms to the rules of 
dramatic art, whether a farce is kept within the limits of 
good taste and decency. The only question is whether the 
poet has made people admire, think, weep or laugh more than 

8 



ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE 

other poets; whether people have been moved by his produc- 
tions; whether he has left in the soul the clear and living 
picture of his characters, the remembrance of his recitals, 
the imprint of his sentiments. The beliefs, the passions, the 
prejudices of the people are reflected naively and without 
coloring in this literature. There is not yet arisen between 
the learned and the unlearned that terrible distinction— the 
outcome of different instruction— which to-day separates peo- 
ple into two classes, almost foreign to each other: a class 
almost beyond the pale of literature, another class that dis- 
dains and ignores all that which does not conform to the rules 
set by its doctors. Neither in Greece nor in the Middle Ages 
did this distinction exist. The same poetry pleased all— the 
prince as well as the burgher, the knight as well as the peas- 
ant. 

All this, however, is entirely true only of the first period 
of the Middle Ages, the period almost wholly consecrated 
to the epic. We do not speak here of the clerics, of those who 
knew Latin, and who wrote and spoke it among themselves. 
These remained without influence upon popular poetry, which 
they despised. The fusion of their science with the popular 
language and poetry occurring, almost simultaneously in 
France and in Italy toward the end of the thirteenth century 
marks the beginning of a new period. But from the second 
half of the twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth 
century, there is a tendency to a separation analogous to that 
of the learned and unlettered. Then arises, by a natural and 
ordinary process, that more restrained society which seeks 
to distinguish itself from the rest by the elegance of its life, 
the refinement of its customs, the conventional politeness of 
its manners. This elite is grouped naturally at the courts of 
the kings and princes; the term courtesy {court oisie) is em- 
ployed to designate its ideal. From that time on men are 
divided into two classes— the polite world and the vilains: * 
those who make up elegant society, who know its usages, share 
its ideas ; and those who are excluded from it, and are ignorant 
of its refinements. 

In this formation of a polite society the important role 

1 Vilain was used for rustic (noun). 
9 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

belongs to the women. They introduce superficially at least, 
if not really, into the manners a certain sweetness and urban- 
ity, and infuse the rude and narrow bravery of the feudal 
lord with the sentiment of galanterie. The tournaments are 
changed into gallant feasts over which the women preside, 
or they replace by social games and pleasures the too virile 
amusements of the eleventh century. Thus inspired, the 
rude barons who knew only the chase and war are trans- 
formed into the gallant knights of the time of St. Louis 
(1226-1270)— knights who pass a part of their lives in feast- 
ing and assemblies, who vie with each other in the richness 
of their costume, in luxurious modes of living, who carry 
proudly on their helmets, when going to battle, the symbol 
of their lady's love. This incessant influence refines, en- 
nobles, purifies, and perhaps also weakens, character. The 
virtues and graces of this chivalrous society have been singu- 
larly exaggerated; but it has done much for our education, 
and, in developing its traditions, France, its true fatherland, 
has become and remained the most social and polite nation 
of Europe. This new world needed a poetry distinct from 
that of the people, a poetry courtly as the society for which 
it was destined. And this poetry appeared, on the one hand, 
in the versified romances of the Round Table, 1 and, on the 
other, in the greatest lyric works of the Middle Ages. 

In the primitive times of all countries, poetry is anony- 
mous ; it belongs to no one in particular, and the entire people 
take part and reflect themselves in it. In the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries, before the separation of the courtly and 
vilains, before the creation of an artificial literature, when the 
jongleurs {troubadours; Greek: rhapsodes), loved and under- 
stood equally by all, were the sole historians, the sole poets 
and scholars, the Middle Ages found expression in their great- 
est power and variety. Even later, in spite of the separation 
of the people in two classes, in spite of the introduction of 
popular literature, there lived a poetry which addressed itself 
to the whole nation: the poetry of the theater. In the four- 

1 This will be treated later in detail. In Arthurian legend the table was 
made by the magician Merlin for Uther Pendragon, who gave it to the 
father of Guinevre, from whom, in turn, Arthur received it, together with 
one hundred knights, as a wedding gift. 

10 



ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE 

teenth and fifteenth centuries the mystery plays were what 
the epic songs had been before them. Their exclusively 
religious subjects gave them equal rights and claims to the 
sympathy and respect of all, and in spite of their slight 
literary value, they are one of the most original and power- 
ful creations of the middle ages ; and if the individual drama 
has been substituted for these great national representations, 
these logically and spontaneously developed mysteries have 
inspired some of the religious plays and autos by Calderon, 1 
and the historical plays by Shakespeare. So the poetry of 
the Middle Ages, in its principal aspects, was epic, lyric, and 
dramatic. 

But all these branches of French literature during the 
Middle Ages vary according to the differences of spirit of all 
the stages of society that participate in them, and especially 
according to the local and racial characteristics of the terri- 
tories from which they spring. Gustave Lanson, the admir- 
able literary historian of France, says that ' ' each one of those 
regions furnishes its part in the literature of the Middle 
Ages. Normandy and France proper apply themselves to the 
editing of their chansons de geste ('songs of heroic deeds'), 
as Burgundy in its century of separate existence creates an 
epic of its own. In Champagne bloom romance, lyrical ideal- 
ism, and personal memoirs. The noisy communes of Picardy 
rejoice in dramatic poetry. Paris is the center : she produces 
all, avails herself of all; everything flows to her. Rutebeuf 
leaves his Champagne, Jean de Meung his Orleanais, and both 
transfer their great talents to the capital. Then, during 
long centuries, the provinces, one by one, as they enter upon 
national unity, receive the one French language, and mingle 
their original genius with its central spirit : crude and dreamy 
Brittany, reinfusing French literature with Celtic melan- 
choly; inflexible and reasoning Auvergne; Lyons, mystic and 
passionate city despite the superficial agitation of material 
interests; the entire South, so varied and so rich, in one 
place more Roman, in another still marked by the passage of 
the Arabs or the Moors, preserving under all the alluvial 

1 Pedro Calderon de la Barca (Madrid, 1600-81), one of the most cele- 
brated of the Spanish dramatists and poets. 

11 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

strata with which history has successively covered it, its 
primitive layer of Iberian population ; hot and vibrating Pro- 
vence, all charm or all fire ; Gascony, scintillating with vivac- 
ity, light and delicate; and strong and powerful Languedoc, 
perhaps the one country of France where forms and tones 
of poetry are best felt in their special beauty. ' • 



197*7 



THE HISTORY OF 
FRENCH LITERATURE 



CHAPTER II 

EPICS 

Epic poetry — "poetic narrative which precedes the ages 
when history is written" — is, in the natural order of develop- 
ment as admitted by most critics, posterior to lyric and an- 
terior to dramatic poetry. The first form of song was the 
hymn originating with the ceremonies of the sanctuary. 
Then men turned to the description of nature, of love, of 
death, and this poetry usually sung to the accompaniment of 
the lyre, was called lyrical poetry. The epic was born when 
men began to narrate the lives of their heroes and to sing 
their praises. 

The beginnings of the national epics are lost in the pre- 
historic times of nations f and the true epic is first found with 
the peoples of the Aryan race. The source of the epic is the 
oral transmission of the national history of a people, usually 
centered around one personage in the time when the military 
nobility was considered the flower of humanity. This oral 
information of the historical facts, at first legendarized, then 
greatly exaggerated, finally became fantastic and was per- 
petuated in writing. Thus arose the Homeric Iliad and 
Odyssey of Greece, the Mdhdbhdrata and the Rdmdyana of 
India, the Nib dung en of Germany, the Poema del Cid of 
Spain, and the Chanson de Roland, the greatest of French 
epics, in France. 

Pio Rajna, an Italian scholar, has established the Germanic 
origin of the French epic : ' ' romane dans son developpement, 

1 The triumph song of Deborah (1300 b.c.) and the twelve adventures 
of the Shimshon (Samson) saga show traces of epic songs. Pentaur, poet 
and priest of the court of Egypt, sang the heroic deeds of King Rameses 
II in the Battle of Kadish (twelfth century b.c). Schi-King is a collection 
of heroic songs of the Chinese collected by Confucius (sixth century B.C.). 

13 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

elle etait germaine dans son origine." All the nations who 
inhabited Gaul from the sixth to the seventh centuries con- 
tributed something toward the future French epic: the 
Celts, however, only furnished the characteristics of some of 
its heroes, the Romans gave the epic its form in language 
(vulgar Latin) and in versification, the church gave its faith, 
but the Germanic tribes brought the greatest influence to 
bear, for it is owing to them that the epic was born in France. 
When these tribes invaded Gaul they introduced their custom, 
inherent with them for several centuries, of singing in pop- 
ular verse their origins, their victories, their gods, and their 
heroes, 1 and they did not lose their taste for these epic recitals 
which exalt courage and charm the imagination, but com- 
municated them to the Gallo-Romans. Their ideas of war, 
of royalty, of government, of family, of woman and of law, 
then entered the French national poetry and gave it the epic 
form, triumphing over the popular songs of lyrical and nar- 
rative character, sung by the Gallo-Romans. These popular 
songs were called Cantilenes and were sung both in the old 
German 2 of which an example is the Cantilene Saucourt 
(ninth century) ; and in the vulgar Latin or Gallo-Roman 
(Lingua Romana), as the Cantilene de Sainte Eulalie (ninth 
century) which was the first monument of French national 
poetry. 

Epic composition on the soil of France may run back for 
its origins to the poetic history of the Merovingians, where 
traces of old French poems may be found; in the chansons 
de geste, certain recitals, certain personages, moral traits, 
customs civil and military, are the manifest residuum of the 
most ancient poetry and the most ancient civilization of 
France. In the fifth century, songs on Clovis were probably 
sung, and in the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries poems on 
Dagobert, Charles Martel and Pepin le Bref may have ex- 
isted. Of particular interest is the epic of Floovant 3 taken 

1 Tacitus (first century), in his history of the Germans, states that the 
Germans had an epic poetry whose hero was Sigofred. 

2 The Ludwigslied is supposed to be the last type of cantilene sung in 
German on French soil. 

•Published by Michelant and Guessard: Les anciens poetes de la 
France. 

14 



EPICS 

from a chronicle of the eighth century, the Gesta Dagoberti, 
and which tells that Floovant is really Dagobert, the name 
Floovant signifying "descendant of Clovis." But of this 
period there is little preserved, and of the fragments which 
remain it is difficult to define their characteristics. There is 
a tradition that Charlemagne caused the epic treasures to be 
collected, and that his ascetic son, Louis the Pious (814-40), 
who had been coerced in his childhood to learn them by heart, 
had no sooner ascended the throne than he ordered them all 
destroyed— by way of compensation for the ennui he had 
suffered in memorizing them. However this may be, nearly 
all have melted from sight with the snows. 

During several centuries these national and religious 
poems were orally transmitted from generation to generation 
until Charlemagne became the principal hero, his legend 
absorbing all others, and in the tenth century was born the 
chanson de geste of truly French character. A number of 
these chansons de geste were inspired by the oral traditions 
circulating daring the Merovingian period, others were in- 
spired by the old Cantilenes. * ' Our chansons de geste, there- 
fore, 7 ' says Leon Gautier, "are military and not clerical, and 
owe nothing to certain Latin chronicles from which it is 
believed by some they have arisen/ ' He tells us that the 
Chronique de Turpin is posterior to the first chansons de 
geste. ' * The Chronique de Turpin and most of the analogous 
legends are the works of some rhetorician of the monasteries 
who copied without intelligence and without animation our 
first chansons de geste.' ' F. Scholle, also asserts that the 
poems had for a long time been preserved by oral tradition 
before having been written, and that the various readings of 
the different compilations are due partly to the intervention 
of the jongleurs and not solely to the copyists. 

According to Marius Sepet there was a transition between 
the cantilene and the chanson de geste — the chanson epique — 
of which the Vie de Saint Alexis gives an exact idea. 

The cantilene was a short popular song sung by the peo- 
ple, whereas the chanson de geste was developed principally 
among the nobility which was also the warrior class. From 
this class were drawn chiefly the trouveres, many of whom 
composed and sang their own songs. As a rule, however, the 

15 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

songs composed by the trouveres were sung by a special class 
of singers, heritage of the scopas (of the Francs) and who 
were called in French joglers (joculares) or jogledors (jocu- 
latores), later jougleors, jougleurs (jongleurs being an en- 
tirely modern form). It was the jongleur who sang the 
poems of fame, generally to the accompaniment of the viola 
(vielle). He went from court to court, from castle to castle 
to sing them as the scopa had done. 

Edgar Quinet, philosopher, poet, and historian, has told 
us how the epics were composed and put forth by the medieval 
French rhapsode. For six dreary winter months the feudal 
castle has remained enveloped in clouds. There have been no 
tournaments, no war, few strangers and pilgrims, to break 
the monotony of the days; the sad, interminable evenings 
are poorly filled by the game of chess. With the swallows the 
return of the trouvere is awaited. On a fine day in May he 
sends forth his jongleurs to recite his poems to the burghers 
and the common people in the little towns of the interior. 
Presently he himself is seen following the escarpement leading 
to the castle. Without delay, from the evening of his arrival, 
the barons, squires, and ladies assemble in the great paved 
hall to hear the poem he has composed during the winter. 
The minstrel does not read his poem— he recites it; and now 
and again, in impassioned passages, he lifts his voice in song, 
to the accompaniment of harp or fiddle. His bearing is 
proud, yet of ingenuous frankness. Observe the complexion 
of his audience : 

" Seigneurs, or faites paix, chevaliers et barons, 
Et roi et dues, et comtes et princes de renoms, 
Et prelats, et bourgeois, gens de religion, 
Dames et demoiselles, et petits enfancons. 1 " 

In some cases he has composed his song by order of the 
lord who has lent him the chronicle containing the tradition 
he embellishes. The ancestors of his host figure therein. 
Neighboring ^places— little towns, the forts, castles, and mon- 

1 Lords, hold your peace, chevaliers and barons, and king, and dukes, 
and counts, and princes of renown, and prelates, and bourgeois, and men 
of religion, matrons and maidens and little children. 

16 



EPICS 

asteries, are named. The name of France is never pro- 
nounced without qualification: it is sweet, pleasant, praised 
or honored France. The minstrel speaks to his auditors of 
what they know and love the best— of tournaments and of 
battles. In the virtues he ascribes to his heroes there is little 
variety, but his terms are striking and energetic. ' ' Proud of 
thought,' ' "brave as a lion," "after the fashion of a proud 
man, ' ' are phrases oft recurring. He sings of the great deeds 
of Oliver, who, wounded to death, arises from his bed to 
defy the Saracen chief; of the horse Bayard, which the 
squires bleed to drink its blood while beset by famine in the 
castle of Renaud ; of the conquest of Barbastre, or the battle 
of Alichamp — both episodes in the Carlovingian cycle of 
epics; of the coming of the Emir's daughter to the prison of 
the knights; of Charlemagne's complaint upon hearing the 
horn of Roland. Often the poet is powerless to regulate the 
disorder of confused traditions : he falls back on the exclama- 
tion, " Oyez seigneurs! " (" Listen, my lords! ") 

In those warlike assemblies the voice of the minstrel rang 
like sword on shield in a tournament, and was echoed sonor- 
ously by the objects about him. The battlements of the castle, 
the wind blowing through the halls, the signals from the 
watch towers, the clattering chains of the drawbridges— all 
these are in some measure a part of his poem. What he 
does not say, the surroundings and the memories of the audi- 
tors supply. "With the coming of autumn the minstrel's song 
is over; he departs, laden with gifts of precious vestments, 
fine weapons, horses with elaborate trappings. If not already 
a knight, he is, perhaps, made one. Then, in his absence, the 
life of the manor loses its expression, and relapses into silence 
and monotony. 

In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the jongleur's pro- 
fession was ennobling, even heroic. He followed the armies, 
aroused them to battle— perhaps took a brave part in it him- 
self. We have noted that one such jongleur, Taillefer by 
name, was present at the battle of Hastings, and sang to the 
Normans the epic of Roncesvalle (from the Roman de Rou 
by Wace, oldest poet of the Breton Cycle) : 



17 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

"Taillefer qui mult bien chantout 
Sur un cheval qui tost alout 
Devant le due alout cantant 
De Charlemaine et de Rollant 
Et d 'Olivier et des vasalles 
Qui mururent a Renchesvals." 1 

But the jongleur did not remain long on the height. As 
poetic inspiration waned, he himself sank. In the forefront 
of the armies, at the courts of kings, in the service of the 
great lords, he rode gaily a good horse. But in the fourteenth 
century he fares afoot, in shabby but gaudy attire, carrying 
his fiddle on his back, and stopping at public places to draw 
an audience. He would play a prelude, sing a popular song 
—and pass the plate. Reduced to such shifts, he is presently 
confounded with clowns, with the owners of dancing bears, 
with sword swallowers. From the exigencies of his plight 
we have derived a slang phrase, payer en monnaie de singe 
(to pay in monkey coin) ; for, lacking the wherewithal for 
bridge tolls, he was constrained to ' ' cut a monkey shine, ' ' and 
so pass on. In the fifteenth century his misery became ex- 
treme, his reputation detestable. But in high and low estate 
he was the needed interpreter of that poetry which he helped 
to foster, and which replaced for the people both reading 
and theater. 

According to Gaston Paris, the jongleurs have played an 
important role in the development of the French epic which 
finally comprised an immense epic material, and which toward 
the middle of the eleventh century spun itself out into long 
poems and later was divided into cycles. Leon Gautier's def- 
inition of a cycle is a number of popular poets grouped 
around a hero or an important event which becomes the sub- 
ject of their poems. Joseph Bedier tells us in his famous 
Legendes epiques, how the trouveres of the thirteenth century 
distributed all their epic poems (the hundred chansons de 
geste which have been preserved and many others which have 
been lost) .into three cycles: 

1 Taillefer, the great singer, on a swift horse, before the duke went 
singing of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver and the vassals who 
died at Roncesvalle. 

18 



EPICS 

N'ot que trois gestes en France la garnie: 

Du rois de France est la plus seignorie, 

Et Tautre apres, bien est droiz que gel die 

Est de Doon a la barbe florie . . . 

La tierce geste qui molt fist a proisier 

Fu de Garin de Monglane le fier. (Girart de Viane.) * 

These three groups are : First, the Royal Cycle consecrated 
to the legend of Charlemagne and to the national wars, of 
which the greatest poem is the Chanson de Roland. In this 
cycle Gaston Paris also places the poems relating to the Mero- 
vingians: Floovant, the most ancient; Les Saisnes; Le Pele- 
rinage de Charlemagne (poem of the eleventh century) ; 
and Le Boi Louis, a beautiful poem of the eleventh century 
and of which only a fragment of six hundred verses has been 
preserved. Second, the Cycle of Doon de Mayence, the center 
of which is Renaud de Montauban, 2 and which is consecrated 
to the wars of the barons among themselves or against Char- 
lemagne. The principal poems of this group are Doon de 
Mayence, Les quatre fils Aimon from the ancient version of 
Renaud de Montauban (twelfth century). Third, the Cycle 
of Garin de Monglane, composed of twenty-four romances 
of which William of Orange 3 is the principal hero and which 
tells of the wars of the Provengals against the Saracens. 
Among these are: La Chanson d'Aliscans, Girart de Viane, Le 
Roman de Garin de Monglane. It is said that the trouveres 
having divided the epic legends into three cycles, also estab- 
lished a mystical relation between the three chiefs of these 
three cycles : Charlemagne, Doon de Mayence, Garin de Mon- 
glane were born on the same day, at the same hour, in the 
midst of miracles. 

1 There are but three gestes in rich France; 
That of the King of France is the most esteemed, 
And the next, 'tis but right I should say so, 
Is that of Doon with the white beard . . . 
The third geste in which there is much to praise 
Is that of proud Garin de Monglane. 

2 According to some authorities Ogier le Danois is the central figure of 
this cycle. 

3 A manuscript in Boulogne contains about a dozen compositions with 
the title, Li Roumans de Guillaume d'Orange. 

19 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

With the great cycles a number of small cycles originated 
in the provinces of France, such as the bloody and savage 
Cycle of the Lorrains, the cycle of hatred and private feuds ; 
the Cycle of Girart de Roussillon ; the Cycle of Aubri de Bour- 
going and that of Raoul de Cambrai. Each of these cycles 
was independent of the other and not one, says Leon Gautier 
could be reasonably attached to any of the great cycles, yet 
owing to a sort of " cyclical monomania," the trouveres at- 
tached them to the three great cycles. 

The most famous of the great epic narratives transmitted 
to us in literary form is the Chanson de Roland, which, in the 
form afforded us by the Oxford manuscript, precedes the 
year 1080 a.d. 1 The episode on which was wrought the Chan- 
son de Roland 2 seemed in its actuality so trivial to the 
historians 3 of Charlemagne 's reign that they but briefly 
recorded it. The Caliphate of Cordova in Spain had been 
dismembered, and one of the warring Moorish chiefs who 
had shared in its partition, invoked the aid of Charlemagne 
against the Emir. A French army descended upon Spain, pos- 
sessed Pamplona, and approached Saragossa. Then Charles, 
having secured hostages from the Emir, and being threat- 
ened by an uprising of the Saracens, deemed it wise to return. 
He passed the Pyrenees in safety with the bulk of his army ; 
but the Basques fell upon the rear guard at Roncevaux— a 
trap into which Charles had foolishly led them— and his 
nephew, Roland, 4 in command, perished there on the 15th 
of August, in the year 778. On such a slight structure of fact 
was erected the greatest epic of France. 

It is certain that the Chanson de Roland, as we possess it, 
was not derived directly from the original popular forms, but 
is a growth and an elaboration from the great body of epic 
songs produced in the primitive period of spontaneous inven- 
tion. In its oldest written form it represents, at the least, a 

1 There are eight manuscripts of the Chanson de Roland, of which 
those of Oxford and of the Library of St. Mark in Venice are the oldest. 

2 The Chanson de Roland was translated in all European languages; 
there is even an Icelandic version. 

3 The historical facts of this poem, which are very meager, are given by 
Eginhard, historian of Charlemagne (Eginhardi Vita Caroli Magni IX). 

i Historically, Roland was not Charlemagne's nephew. 

20 



EPICS 

second or third stage of the legend. Gaston Paris writes of 
it : * * The last adapter of the poem, whom we may place about 
1080, has fashioned a poem in which contradictions and ob- 
scurities are not lacking, but which is presented on the whole 
with a certain unity and an incontestable grandeur. It is the 
dominant work of the French Middle Ages: it sums up their 
highest ideal, it presents their most powerful effort, it trans- 
mits to posterity all that was most vital and lasting in those 
times— patriotism, honor, and duty— and it deserves to re- 
main always for France a truly national work. It is the 
most perfect flower in that fruitful field of poetry, blooming 
in the heroic age of France, which we call chansons de geste 
— songs woven around the facts, or the reputed facts, of 
history. 1 It seems probable that all the poems of this kind are 
a sort of vulgar development of much shorter songs— like to 
those which Germania's warlike tribes consecrated to the 
glory of their heroes. 

This Chanson de Roland, though it belongs in its present 
form to the last third of the twelfth century, was discovered 
in an Oxford manuscript by Francisque Michel as late as 
1836. According to some authorities its author was a Norman 
who lived in England, Touroude or Theroulde, mentioned 
in the last verse of the epic : ' ' Ci fait la geste que Turoldus 
declinet." (This is the geste which Turoldus ends.) Leon 
Gautier asserts that one may interpret this sentence in three 
ways: A poet who has finished his poem; a scribe who has 
finished copying it; a jongleur who has finished relating it; 
and therefore it were better to regard the Chanson de Roland 
as an anonymous poem. There are 4,002 verses, in all, 
divided into five parts. The first part is concerned with the 
embassy of the Saracen King, Marsile, to Charlemagne, and 
the treason of Ganelon, Charlemagne's vassal. In the second, 
acting on the pledge of Marsile and the good faith of Ganelon, 
Charles leaves Spain, where he had been at war for a long 
time. Roland, his nephew, commands the rear guard, and 
is accompanied by Olivier and the Bishop Turpin. The third 
part, and the most beautiful, discloses Roland passing through 

1 Geste (from the Latin neuter plural, gesta, which becomes in French a 
feminine substantive) was used in the sense of " history." Later on, une 
geste came to mean in French an epic poem. 

21 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the gorge of Roncevaux, where, in violation of the Saracen 
oath, he is attacked, and defends himself heroically. In the 
fourth division the Emperor, who has heard too late the 
despairing blast of Roland 's horn, returns to the scene of 
carnage, smites the Saracens, and gathers the bodies of his 
dead. In the last scene of all— the traitor Ganelon is caught 
and put to death. 

Of all the episodes of the Chanson that of the death of 
Roland" is the most pathetic. The dying hero laments the 
fate of ' ' Durandal, ' ' his sword, which must not fall into the 
hands of the enemy, or of some coward. As if it were a living 
thing, he reminds it of exploits performed, and of the holy 
relics in its golden sheath. But death is creeping to his heart ; 
he lies down, face upturned, his sword, and his horn " Oli- 
phant ' ' 2 under him. He prays that God will forgive him his 
sins ; and, with conscience eased, sweet memories come to him : 

De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, 

De Charlemagne, sun seigneur, qui le nourrit. 8 

Again imploring the divine grace, with his right hand he 
extends his glove toward God, as a sign of chivalrous faith; 
and it is taken by St. Gabriel. Then, reclining his head on 
his arm, ''with folded hands he went to his end" ("jointes 
ses mains est alets a sa fin"). Finally, God sends his angels, 
who convey the count's soul to Paradise. The pathos and 
simplicity in the poem on Aude's death is striking: 

Mort d'Atjde 

(Modern French translation) 

L'Empereur est revenu d'Espagne: 

II vient a Aix, la meilleure ville de France. 

, . 

1 The phrase " to give a Roland for an Oliver " (a blow for a blow) 
comes from the legend which tells that Roland fought for five days with 
Oliver, but as they were equally matched, neither was victorious. 

7 The sword and horn which tradition says Roland won from the giant 
Jutmundus. 

s Of sweet France, the men of his race, of Charlemagne, his lord who 
brought him up. 

22 



EPICS 

Monte au palais, entre en la salle. 

Une belle damoiselle vient a lui: c'est Aude. 

Elle dit au roi: "Ou est Roland le capitaine, 

Qui m'a jur6 de me prendre pour femme? " 

Charles en est plein de douleur et d'angoisse; 

II pleure des yeux, il tire sa barbe blanche : 

"Sceur, chere amie, dit-il tu me demandes nouvelles d'un homme mort. 

Mais va, je saurai te remplacer Roland ; 

Je ne puis te mieux dire: je te donnerai Louis, 

Louis, mon fils, celui qui tiendra mes marches." 

"Ce discours m'est etrange," repond belle Aude. 

44 Ne plaise a Dieu, ni a ses saints, ni a ses anges, 
Qu' apres Roland je vive encore!" 
Lors elle perd sa couleur et tombe aux pieds de Charles. 
Elle est morte soudain : Dieu veuille avoir son ame ! l 

Antedating the epic of Roland is a singular production 
(about 1060) which we cannot ignore— a complete poem, 
written in heroic verse, entitled The Pilgrimage of Charle- 
magne to Jersualem, the only comic chanson de geste exist- 
ing (found in a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the 
British Museum). An abstract of this extraordinary com- 
position will prove interesting : 

1 Death of Aude 

(Literal translation) 
The Emperor has returned from Spain: 
He arrives at Aix, the best city of France. 
He rides up to the palace, enters the hall. 
A beautiful lady comes to meet him: it is Aude. 
She says to the king: "Where is Roland the chief, 
Who swore to take me for wife? " 
Charles is filled with sorrow and anguish; 
His eyes weep, he pulls his white beard. 

"Sister, dear friend," says he, "you ask me about a dead man. 
But I shall know how to fill Roland's place. 
I cannot say better: I will give you Louis, 
Louis, my son, he who will rule over my lands." 
..." Tis a strange speech you make me," answers fair Aude, 
" God and his saints and his angels forbid, 
That I continue to live after Roland!" 

Then the color leaves her face and she falls at the feet of Charles. 
She died suddenly: God have her soul! 

23 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Charlemagne, says our imaginative author, stood one day, 
crown on head, before a mirror, admiring his majestic ap- 
pearance. His queen, in a taunting spirit, flung at him the 
gibe that in the person of the Emperor Hugo of Constan- 
tinople there reigned a sovereign more kingly than he. Char- 
lemagne 's vanity was stung. Swearing a great oath that he 
would test her tale by looking upon this monarch, and that 
if she had spoken falsely he would behead her on his return, 
he set forth immediately for Constantinople accompanied by 
his twelve paladins. On the way he tarried in Jerusalem, to 
make his devotions, and the Patriarch paid him all honor and 
gave him many precious relics. We learn from the veracious 
poet that Charles and his peers repaired to that church 
" where the Lord Himself sang His first mass with His 
Apostles.' ' There were the thirteen chairs which no one 
since had dared to occupy; but Charles undaunted, took the 
seat of Jesus, while the twelve peers seated themselves in the 
chairs of the Apostles. 

"When Charles and his companions reached Constantinople 
the emperor gave them a banquet— a banquet so copious of 
wine that the Frankish ruler and his paladins boasted in their 
cups that they would do extravagant deeds. Charles him- 
self declared that with one stroke of his sword he would halve 
a horse and the ironclad knight that bestrode him. Roland, 
on his part, undertook to overthrow the city walls with a 
blast from his horn, and to tear out the beard of the Greek 
emperor. Another paladin, not to be outdone, vowed that 
he would turn the river from its course and inundate the 
capital. These boasts, and others not very becoming, being 
reported to Hugo by a spy hidden conveniently in a hollow 
column, the royal host informed his guests that they would be 
detained until they had made good their vauntings. Greatly 
embarrassed, they sought to excuse themselves, but Hugo 
would not relent. So they prayed to Heaven for aid, invok- 
ing the saints whose relics they bore with them. And it 
came to pass that the walls of the city began to fall, and the 
water to pour in. Hugo asked no more, but showered presents 
on the pilgrims and bade them depart as they had come. Fi- 
nally, we learn that Charles, upon his return home, forgave the 
queen, in view of the pleasures he had tasted on his journey. 

24 



EPICS 

The external form of these poems varies little. The Chan- 
son de Roland is in couplets, tirades, or stanzas (laisses). 1 
Every stanza forms a natural division of the narrative. The 
couplet is composed in the Roland poem of at least twelve to 
fifteen verses and becomes much more developed in the later 
poems. Assonance at first prevails— assonance consisting in 
a repetition of the last accented vowel in a word indepen- 
dently of the consonants following it. Later the rhyme pre- 
vails. 

Charles Aubertin, author of the Origins of French Poetry 
describes the epics thus: They disclose a happy instinct, a 
brave fervor; we note a welling forth of naive and forceful 
qualities, the beginnings of grandeur. But art is absent, 
composition is almost wanting. The recital is neither rich 
nor graceful ; it is rather like a good old breast-plate, and its 
penetration is that of an iron sword. The verses, running 
all alike, following the one upon the other with a similarity 
of sound, suggest medieval barons in ponderous armor. One 
of poetic intuition may perceive an entire moral state far 
removed from our own — a less cultivated, a less complex 
humanity, yet young and full of life; and one undergoes with 
joy its fortifying influence. And this is the true merit of 
the French epic poems. If the literary interest frequently 
flags, if the poetry falls below mediocrity, there remains 
nevertheless the historic interest— that is to say the accurate 
picture of feudal manners in their living originality. It is 
here one must repair if he would see the portrait and the 
reflection of an epoch which the later French chroniclers have 
by no means described — which Joinville, Froissart, Ville- 
hardouin himself, in their primitive rudeness, did not know. 
The chansons de geste are, in a word, the poetic history of 
feudalism. 

Gaston Paris, who has set forth the immense influence of 
the French heroic epics upon the Germanic and Latin world 
of Europe tells us that they were transplanted early to the 
neighboring countries : England, Germany, Holland, Norway, 
Spain, but above all, in Italy, where dialects more or less 
analogous to the French prevailed. The poems first sung in 

1 See L6on Gautier's Chanson de Roland (texfce critique, eighth edition). 

25 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

French were then strongly influenced by the dialects of North- 
ern Italy and a romantic element was introduced. In the 
course of time, these Franco-Italian poems were imitated in 
Italian verse and prose, culminating in an epic poetry such 
as Ariosto's brilliant Orlando Furioso, Bajardo's Orlando 
Innamorato, Tasso's Go ff redo (later called Gerusalemme Li- 
berata), Pulci's Morgante Maggiore and others. As for the 
prose— the romances— they continue to delight the people. 
Even to-day a compilation made from several of them and 
published with the title, Beali di Francia, enjoys a vogue 
which numberless editions attest. It is the merit of the epics 
that they parallel true history with the national legendary 
history, and indicate the transformation imposed from cen- 
tury to century on persons and events. 

The reign of Charlemagne " inspired " the poets of subse- 
quent periods to produce innumerable verified romances which 
it would be tedious to analyze. But in the older poems the 
type of Charlemagne is apotheosized, whereas in the subse- 
quent romances, in order to please the great vassals of the 
thirteenth century in their struggle against royalty, he is dis- 
torted into caricature. The role of woman also changes; in 
the early poems she was depicted as rude and wild, but 
chaste; in the later poems she is represented as dishonorable 
and lascivious. In short, the older poems are more simple, 
but natural, the later ones are false and strained. Leon 
Gautier informs us that no Provencale chanson de geste has 
been preserved, unless it be Giratz de Rousilho, which, how- 
ever, was composed in both the languages d'oc and d'o'il. He 
concludes that Northern France only achieved the epic form 
of poetry. The last epic cycle of France was that of the 
Crusades. Two other important cycles in France during the 
Middle Ages are the Breton Cycle of Celtic inspiration and 
the Cycle of Antiquity taken from the legendary sayings re- 
lating to Greece and Rome. 

Toward the middle of the twelfth century, along with the 
Germanic epic, the Celtic traditions suddenly took their place 
and with them a new world arose — a world less barbarous and 
warlike. The chanson de geste is essentially feudal; the new 
saga marks a departure from feudalism. While the scene of 
the chansons de geste is in France and the neighboring coun- 

26 



EPICS 

tries, that of the legends of the Breton Cycle was restricted 
to the lands where the Celtic dialects were spoken. Of the 
three branches of that dialect the Gaelic disappeared since 
the fourth century; the Gaelic is preserved in Ireland, Scot- 
land, and on the Isle of Man ; the Breton or Cymric in Wales 
and in Brittany 1 where it was introduced by the Bretons 
who fled before the Saxon invasion, taking refuge in an- 
cient Armorica. Thus the traditions were brought from Eng- 
land and introduced by the trouveres — Breton or Welsh 
and then French musicians — to the big and little courts of 
Prance. 

The most ancient texts preserved cannot be traced back 
farther than about 1150, but it is certain that these were 
preceded by oral recitals of a much earlier period. The most 
ancient form in which the Breton traditions seem to have 
appeared is in the lai. The lais (lays) were sung by these 
musicians to the accompaniment of the harp, and through 
this channel the epic traditions of the Celts of Great Britain 
spread throughout France. The largest collection of lays 
was gathered by Marie de France and dedicated to Henry 
II of England, second husband of Eleanor e of Aquitaine, 
the queen who made Breton poetry the fashion at her courts. 
From Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanore and her 
first husband Louis VII of France, the poet Chrestien de 
Troyes received the theme of his Lancelot, 2 the most brilliant 
versification of the Breton romances. 

The Breton Cycle, called also the Arthurian or Cycle of 
the Round Table 3 forms an immense collection to which 
the poets of various countries collaborated. In the most of 
these compositions King Arthur fills the role assigned to 
Charlemagne in the French epics. The first notice literature 
takes of Arthur is in a Latin chronicle by the Breton monk 
Nennius in the eighth century. According to common ver- 
sion he lived in the sixth century and was the son of Pen- 

1 This language is spoken by over a million people in Brittany to-day, 
of which, however, about half the number also speak French. 

2 Dante has given the character of Lancelot an important place in his 
Francesco, da Rimini episode. 

3 The twelve knights of King Arthur are all seated indiscriminately 
about the Round Table, significant of their equality. 

27 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

dragon. The last Breton king, 1 he defended England against 
the Picts and Scots in twelve battles, but disappeared after 
the last battle. The Bretons, deprived of their king, took 
refuge in Armorica in France, which province took from them 
the name of Bretagne (Brittany). Tradition has it that 
Arthur did not die but was taken by the enchanter Merlin 
and the bard Faliesin to the island of Avalon, the "Land of 
Eternal Youth," whence he would some day return to raise 
his kingdom to its former magnificence. 

The poets in the age of Arthur and in the generation im- 
mediately following, celebrated the hero's exploits in brief 
but expressive songs ; a century later the songs were developed 
and the legendary recital appeared. England's subjugation 
by the Saxons, and the overthrow of the Saxon rule by the 
Normans (1066), each imposed new matter on a legend al- 
ready transformed; and each series of contributors wrought 
according to the genius of their race and the taste of the 
time. 

The two principal sources of the subject matter of Brit- 
tany were the Historia regum Britannice by Godfrey of 
Monmouth 1136 (published by San Marte 1854) and the 
Roman de Brut by Robert Wace. From these sources have 
proceeded in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries an enor- 
mous quantity of poems divisible into two groups. The first, 
composed of poems strictly treating of the Round Table, in- 
clude all those which are inspired by the love of chivalry 
and heroism, the principal ones being: Lancelot, Merlin, 
Yvain, Erec, and Enide, 2 le Chevalier an Lion, Tristan de 
Leonnais. The second group has a religious tendency alto- 
gether mystical, the object of which is the search for the Holy 
Grail. Of these the Romance of Perceval 3 by the ancient 
trouvere Chrestien de Troves is the oldest and best. It was 
continued by successive French versifiers to the extent of 
some fifty thousand verses. 

1 According to Breton tradition Arthur's court was held in Carduel in 
Cumberland, but a Welsh tradition has it in Carleon. 

2 The same legend that Tennyson used in his Idylls of the King. 

3 The legend of Perceval, Welsh Peredur (searcher for the basin), is 
among the collection of Welsh tales in the Red Book of Hergest, a manu- 
script of the fourteenth century, at Jesus College, Oxford. 

28 



EPICS 

Chrestien de Troyes, one of the most celebrated poets of 
the Middle Ages, was the greatest champion of love, chivalry, 
and the cult of women. One of his best works is the Roman 
de Cliges written about 1160. Cliges is in love with Fenice 
who returns his love, but is forced to marry his uncle Alexius, 
emperor of Byzantium (Constantinople). Cliges in despair 
seeks diversion in many adventures at the court of Arthur 
in Brittany. His love for Fenice, however, brings him back 
to Constantinople. Fenice feigning illness is given a strong 
sleeping potion by her nurse, and seemingly dead, is in- 
terred with great pomp in the cathedral, where during the 
night she elopes with Cliges. For more than a year they 
live in undisturbed happiness, but finally discovered and 
pursued by the emperor's wrath, they flee for protection to 
Arthur's court. Soon after the emperor dies and they re- 
turn to reign in Constantinople. Tradition has it that since 
then the rulers of Constantinople keep their wives closely 
guarded. 

At the end of the twelfth century, Robert de Boron in 
his trilogy of the Grail (Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Per- 
ceval) united the Christian legend with the Celtic traditions 
of the Round Table. These allegorical recitals infused with 
vague mysticism treat of the Grail (the old French word 
greal, Latinized gratalis) as the vessel used by Christ at the 
Last Supper, and in which Joseph of Arimathea afterwards 
caught the blood flowing from the side of the crucified 
Saviour. This precious chalice, so the legend ran, was car- 
ried to Britain where it was hidden for centuries and finally 
recovered by the Welsh hero Perceval. From this poem are 
derived subsequent forms of the legend. It is evident that 
they proceeded from sacerdotal influences. 1 At the same 
time the lay influence was exercised in the recital of the 
deeds done by the knights to win a sight of the Holy Grail 
which, it was said, insured great happiness to the possessor 
of perfect chastity, but vanished from sight when approached 
by one not perfectly pure. 

1 The legend of the Grail or Graal is said to have been suggested by the 
words in Matt, xxvi, 23: "Qui intingit mecum manum in paropside hie 
me iradet." (He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish the same shall 
betray me.) 

29 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

One of the oldest romances of this cycle is the song oi' 
Tristan and his undying love for the fair Iseult of Ireland, 
wife of King Mark of Cornwall, which ends in the death of 
the lovers. Originally a Breton or Cornish legend of ancient 
and barbarous times, it became in the Middle Ages the sub- 
ject of poems and romances in numerous tongues. Received 
by the trouveres Beroul and Thomas of the twelfth century, 
it had an extraordinary distribution throughout all Europe. 
Gaston Paris describes it as one of the finest love epics ever 
conceived. Eilhard von Oberge introduced this romance to 
German literature in the last half of the twelfth century; 
the great Gottfried von Strassburg left the famous epic, 
though unfinished, in its most classical form, and sequels 
were written by two later poets, the last in 1300. From this 
Richard Wagner drew the subject of one of his most im- 
pressive music dramas. 

Godfrey of Monmouth in the Eistoria regwm Britannia 
writes of a strange personage — partly of Welsh tradition, 
partly of his own invention — the sorcerer Merlin, 1 son of a 
demon and a woman. Merlin figures in many romances of the 
Breton Cycle. His life was written in popular Latin, and his 
prophecies, credited indiscriminately, formed a most interest- 
ing chapter in medieval literature. They embraced, among 
others, that prophecy commonly applied to the infamous 
Isabeau of Bavaria, who betrayed France, and to Jeanne 
d'Arc, who saved it: "One woman will destroy France, one 
woman will restore her." 

Merlin's love affairs with the fairy Viviane, the lady of 
the lake, are an interesting feature of the legend. In his 
wanderings in a forest in French Brittany, Merlin met the 
young fairy Viviane. He told her that he wrought many 
wonderful things. To test him, Viviane asked that he cause 
to appear in the forest a castle before which knights and 
ladies should pass. Merlin described several circles with his 
magic wand, and the castle appeared. Charmed with his 
magic, she gave her heart to him, and thereafter the magician 
came to see her every year for a season. But this did not 
satisfy her; she wished to keep hi m forever. So she asked 

1 In the Middle Ages Merlin became " le type de l'homme supeneur dont 
le genie est annihile par les ruses d'une femme." 

30 



EPICS 

him whether he knew a spell that would hold some one in an 
enclosure without, however, imprisoning him. For a long 
time he refused her this secret knowledge; but she finally 
drew it from him, and one day when he had fallen asleep, his 
head on her knees, under a blooming rosebush, she repeated 
the incantation he had taught her, and on awakening he be- 
came aware that he was chained forever. 

The literary output of the Breton Cycle is inexhaustible. 
The feudal Occident— romanized, germanized, christianized 
— has found entertainment in it. As the French listened 
to the Breton harpists, their imagination was captivated by 
the fantastic character of the tales in which love and chivalry 
played so great a part. Introduced into the coarse feudal- 
ism of the North, they opened a new world to them — the world 
of fairies and genii, of monsters and miracles and magic. 

From this poetry sprang that ideal of courteous chivalry 
—the protection of the weak and respect for woman. Women 
who rarely figure in the ancient epics are here supreme and 
find poetic expression: such as Morgana, 1 the fairy sister of 
Arthur; his wife Guinevere, 2 with eyes of the "finest blue 
of the heavens' ' and who loved Lancelot of the Lake; Blan- 
chefleur 3 whose story of her love for Floire is strikingly 
like that of Aucassin and Nicolette; and a whole galaxy of 
fairy creations. And these figures are stranger, more cap- 
tivating because of the novelty of their adventures and senti- 
ments, than all the heroes of classical antiquity — than Alex- 
ander, iEneas, and Caesar— who formed a Cycle of Rome or 
Antique Cycle introduced to France by the poets. 

A thirteenth-century poet, John Bodel of Arras, divides 
those elaborate versified recitals into three classes and begins 
his poem Chanson des Saisnes* thus: 

1 One of the leading feminine characters, the heroine of the Morte 
d' Arthur, also appears in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso; introduced into 
Italy, the personage became popular with the Italians, who gave her 
name, Fata Morgana (fairy Morgana), to a phenomenon of mirage pro- 
duced on the coast of Messina and Reggio. 

2 In Chrestien de Troyes's story of Roman de la Charrette. 
8 Boccaccio used the legend in II Filocopo. 

4 Song of the Saxons, in which he treats of Charlemagne's wars with 
Guiteclin (Wittiking). Some authorities claim the authorship for Jehan 
Bordians. 

31 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Ne sont que trois raateres a nul homme entendant 
De France, de Bretagne, et de Rome la grant. 1 

The subject matter of " Great Rome,'* Albert tells us, em- 
braces poems relating both to ancient and sacred history. 
Hector, iEneas, the heroes of the siege of Thebes, Alexander, 
Julius Caesar, and Vespasian himself, are pictured in these 
curious compositions. They are probably the work of clerics 
somewhat better informed than their fellows, and possessed 
of a pedantry that becomes grotesque in its display, inasmuch 
as their knowledge of history seems a bit confused. Thus in 
one of these romances we see Judas Maccabeus fighting the 
Saracens and marrying their king's daughter — a union, we 
are told, from which sprung Brunehild (obit 613 a.d.), 
mother of Julius Caesar. He in turn, betook himself to the 
court of Arthur, King of Brittany, where he married the 
fairy Morgana, mother of St. George and of Oberon the 
dwarf, who already figured in the romance of Huon of Bor- 
deaux. There were few poetic beauties to compensate for 
these absurd anachronisms. 

The oldest Alexandre chanson 2 in the French language 
composed by the cleric Simon and amplified by Lambert li 
Tors, Alexandre de Bernay, and Pierre de Saint-Cloud, is 
written in twelve syllable iambic verse, from which the 
famous Alexandrine of French poetical composition received 
its name. The history of the Macedonian King, Alexander 
the Great, is the subject of this epic of twenty-two thousand 
verses; its coloring, however, is not that of classic antiquity, 
but of the feudal times of the thirteenth century. The Roman 
de Troie by Benoit de Sainte-More in which the author tells 
that the French are descended from the Trojans likewise re- 
flects feudal times. 

1 There are but three kinds for any well-informed man (the epics) of 
France, of Brittany, and of Rome the Great. 

2 An earlier k Alexander poem was written in the twelfth century by 
Alberic de Besancon, or Briancon, in the Dauphine" dialect. 



CHAPTER III 

FABLIAUX 

Poetry, or rather, poetic literature, had up to this time 
been solely devoted to the upper classes represented by 
the great vassals. They alone were the heroes of the poems, 
and they alone were almost the only auditors or readers. But 
toward the end of the twelfth century a new public appeared. 
The burgher also came to hear the poems of the trouveres; 
and after the burgher, the rustic. Hence the necessity arose 
to sing not only for the kings and the powerful barons, for 
the prelates, priests and monks, but f„lso for the tradesmen 
of the towns and the peasants of the villages. The fabliaux 
originated with the bourgeoisie, just about the time when that 
class was really established, but they were written for the 
amusement of all classes. In those conceived to flatter the 
pride of some great vassal or knight, the burgher or rustic 
played a ridiculous role. In others, on the contrary, the 
priest or the lord was the butt, and the rustic laughed his 
rude laugh. The farces related were not always in the best 
taste ; the salt was somewhat coarse— but there was salt. The 
middle class also had its place in the fabliaux ; and this place 
was generally honorable — for in that class were found the 
solid qualities of the race; righteousness, sincerity, economy, 
patriotism. Finally religion, which played such a large part 
in the society of the Middle Ages, has inspired a certain 
number of these tales— some in which we see a true elevation 
of spirit, and others in which the devotion is conventional. 

The novel of adventure— usually a series of stories con- 
nected with the same personage— forms the transition be- 
tween the epics and the fabliaux. Some of these are of 
original invention and some are based on national, Celtic, or 
Oriental traditions; as: Robert le Diable, Richard sans Peur, 
4 33 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

Foulke Fitz-Warin, x Ille et Galeron, Comte d'Artois. An- 
other class of novels popular at this period were the romans 
a tiroir, novels which could be lengthened or shortened by 
the addition or the suppression of the digressional part, of 
which an example is the novel called Sept Sages de Rome. 
The fabliau, 2 also called conte or aventure, is a popular 
anecdote, often satirical, but sometimes tender and touch- 
ing—a short tale in verse. It is a combination of popular 
wisdom and malice contrived to engage both the reason and 
the fancy of the reader. The question of the origin and 
propagation of the fabliaux is a matter of discussion among 
eminent critics. Theodor Benfey, 3 Silvestre de Sacy, 4 Gas- 
ton Paris, 5 Max Miiller, 6 Reinhold Koehler, 7 all uphold the 
oriental theory: the great majority of fabliaux originated in 
a common source — India 8 — and were circulated in Europe 
through two intermediaries, Byzantium which had received 
them from Syria or Persia after their direct importation 
from India to those countries, and through the Arabs. The 
Arabs transmitted them in two ways: in Spain, by the Jews 
and in Syria by the crusaders who, living in intimate relation- 
ship with the Mussulman population, gathered the tales orally 
and transmitted them in the same manner throughout 
Europe. From Spain, the transmission was in a literary 
form and through the Jews, the cosmopolitan people par ex- 
cellence of the Middle Ages, and the only ones who knew 
Arabic and could translate it into Latin. 9 

1 The sources of the Robin Hood tales. 

2 Fablel, of which the regular plural is tableaux; but fabliaux — a form of 
the old Picard dialect — is upheld by many authorities; in Picardy this 
genre of literature was most richly developed. 

3 Pantchatantra, fiinf Biicher indischer Fabeln, Marchen und Erzah- 
lungen, aus dem Sanskrit ubersetzt mit Einleitung von Theodor Benfey. 

1 Calila et Dimna, ou les Fables de Bidpai en arabe. 

» Litterature francaise au moyen-dge. 

6 The migration of the Fable. 

1 Aufsdtzte iiber Marchen und Volkslieder. 

8 Ten Brink 'in his Geschichte der Englischen Literatur also says: "Die 
liauptmasse der Nbuvellen des Mittelalters stammen von Indien." 

9 Recueil general et complet des fabliaux des XIII et XIV siecles imprimis 
ou inedits, publie d'apres les manuscrits, par Anatole de Montaiglon et par 
Gaston Raynaud. 

34 



FABLIAUX 

The oriental theory is disputed by the celebrated savant 
Joseph Bedier, 1 who writes that the fabliaux were born spon- 
taneously on all points of the globe and that it is equally 
impossible to determine their place of origin or their mode 
of propagation. 

The writers of the fabliaux made no pretense to literary 
merit, but their contes have the merit of reflecting the life 
of the period. Some are delightful little stories well told and 
full of sentiment, such as La Vair palefroi (The Dapple-gray 
Horse) ; Guillaume au faucon (William with the Falcon) ; 
Les deux ehangeurs (The Two Money-changers) ; Le Chevalier 
au Ghainse (The Knight with the Tunic.) The general char- 
acteristic of the fabliaux, however, is pleasantry, and this is 
indicated by the terms in which the writers themselves style 
them — bourds or gabets (untruths, trickery) — fit to be told 
after repasts to aid the digestion. In some fabliaux the 
pleasantry leads to obscenity and disgusting platitudes. The 
women are usually unfavorably depicted, sometimes as de- 
praved, or peevish, or ruseful, and often with profound con- 
tempt. The epoch of the fabliaux, of which only one hundred 
and fifty have been preserved, comprises about two centuries, 
the oldest being Richeut (1159), and the latest by Jean de 
Conde (about 1340). But the majority date from the end of 
the twelfth century and the commencement of the thirteenth 
to the middle of the fourteenth centuries. The fabliau 
Richeut is a picture of the life of a courtesan of the twelfth 
century, traced with great surety of touch and a surprising 
realism. Gaston Paris says of it : " Richeut reminds us of the 
most realistic novels of our own days, in which such masculine 
and such feminine types are described with relish, and we 
cannot refuse to recognize that this is a vein very French 
indeed, and altogether very different from what is called 
V esprit gaulois, which reigns in many fables." 

The French fabliaux are rather diverse in character. One 
finds among them the tale of devotion — the itinerary of St. 
Peter, the narrations of Aristaaus, the reputed doings of 
St. Paul. In our own day Anatole France has found in 
them a source of inspiration, and has renewed this form of 

1 See Les Fabliaux, by Joseph B6dier. 
35 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

literature in a manner that denotes great talent. The sub- 
jects of the fabliaux are frequently great sinners who even- 
tually do penance and are forgiven. "We find among them 
the story satirizing the clergy; the story of the spendthrift; 
Bit de Berenger 1 (the Tale of Berenger), prototype of 
Moliere's George Dandin; La Mauvaise Femme (the Wicked 
Dame) ; Le Court Mantel 2 (the Short Mantel) — meaning the 
mantle which becomes shorter or longer according to the 
virtue of the lady who wears it. We note, also, numberless 
stories of conjugal mishaps. Popular literature has drawn 
most liberally on the type of Bartholo in the Middle Ages. 
Again, we encounter the story that is merely amusing; La 
Fontaine's, La Jeune Veuve (The Young Widow), is taken 
from a fabliau by Gautier le Long, in which the young widow 
is almost as lively in the old text as in the most modern one. 

The fabliaux treating of religion are interesting, because 
they show the peculiar conception the people of the Middle 
Ages had of religion, as for instance, the fable of the Cour 
de Paradis (Court of Paradise), a charming, but strange 
poem which tells of God, of the Virgin Mary, the saints and 
apostles dancing to a tune. In this poem the pious intention of 
the poet is evident. Sometimes the fabliaux disclose an artless 
daring, as in Le Vilain qui Conquit le Paradis par plaid, the 
villain 3 who gains admission to Paradise by pleading his own 
cause. Thus runs the theme: A villain dies, and so occupied 
are the angels and demons that his unconsidered soul arises 
alone to the portals of heaven ere judgment has been passed. 
" What would you? " demands St. Peter. " Who allowed you 
to come here ? This is not the abode of villains. Go hence ! ' ' 
" You are always hard as stone, St. Peter," replies the vil- 
lain, ' ' and yet it would more become you to be lenient. Pride 
sits with ill grace on one who has denied Christ. Behold in 
me a sincere and loyal man." St. Peter bears the rebuff 
meekly, and seeks counsel of St. Thomas, who declares that 
he will put the villain in his place. But when he assumes an 
overbearing attitude, he is promptly reminded of his lack of 

1 See Beranger's song: Je suis vilain, vilain, vilain. 

2 Also Le Mantel mautaillie. 

8 Villain (vilain) was used at that time for rustic (both as noun and 
adjective). 

36 



FABLIAUX 

faith ; and so, in his confusion, he calls upon St. Paul. This 
good saint proves even sterner than the others. "I recognize 
you," says the villain, "by your intolerance. You are the 
same cruel tyrant at whose hands the first Christians suf- 
fered." Thereupon the three saints, equally confounded, 
lay the matter before the Lord, who summons the bold villain 
to His presence. "I have led a pure and honorable life," 
pleads the villain. "I have fed the hungry, I have clothed 
the naked, I have sheltered the homeless; I have taken Com- 
munion with a clean conscience. It is thus, we have been 
taught, that eternal life is gained. You know, Lord, that 
I speak the truth." So the villain, after all, is admitted to 
Paradise. 

But what does one not find in these varied and precious 
collections ? Here an elegy full of grace and sentiment, there 
an idyl or an edifying tale; turn the page, and behold!— a 
gross buffoonery. As Albert says, "one is by turns, moved, 
instructed, catechised, refreshed, rejoiced, scandalized. The 
light and sensual mind discovers therein a nourishment to 
its taste; the delicate and pure soul finds food for sweet 
enchantment." In the fabliau of Le Chevalier an Barizel 
(the Knight with the Barrel), we see to what heights these 
narrators can rise. A knight black with crime is condemned 
by Heaven's decree to wander on the earth until he has suc- 
ceeded in filling a cask pierced with many holes. In vain 
are his heroic endeavors to achieve this new task of the 
Danai'des. Then, one day, he performs an act of Christian 
devotion and charity. The succored one weeps with grati- 
tude ; a tear falls into the barrel— it is filled. 

Among the infinite variety of fabliaux we note a simple, 
didactic one that is typical of its kind. This fabliau of the 
Housse Partie (the Divided Horse-blanket) by Bernier, sug- 
gests King Lear. A father, having given his estate to his 
son at the time of the young man's marriage, becomes a 
burden in his old age, whereupon his ungrateful daughter- 
in-law conspires to drive him forth. It is cold, and the old 
man begs that at least he shall be provided with a garment 
against the weather. The unnatural son sends his own young 
boy to fetch the horse-blanket, and the child returns with but 
half of it. "Why did you cut it in two?" asks his father. 

37 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

To which the little one responds that he is keeping the other 
half for the day when he, too, will show his father the door. 
Whereupon the unnatural son repents, and full amends are 
made to the old man. 

Many of the oldest fabliaux are revived in the later 
classical literature of France and other countries. Boccaccio, 
Chaucer, Rabelais, Moliere, and La Fontaine have found the 
inspiration of many of their works in the old fabliaux. The 
fabliau of the Yilain Mire (The Peasant Physician) supplied 
Moliere with the subject of his famous comedy, Le Medecin 
malgre Lui (A Physician in Spite of Himself). In this 
Yilain Mire we are introduced to a woodcutter with a young 
wife whom he is obliged to leave alone all day. Fearful that 
she may receive admirers in his absence, he devises a singular 
means to insure, as he fancies, her faithfulness. Every morn- 
ing he beats her, and every evening he effects a reconciliation. 
The woman resents this peculiar device, and seeks a means 
of revenge. Her opportunity arrives with two strangers, who 
ask her to direct them to some skillful country doctor. "I 
know such a one/' she tells them, "but he is possessed with 
a strange mania. He does not want to appear as a man of 
science, and he will not confess his skill until he has been 
beaten soundly." She gives them a minute description of 
her husband, who is cutting wood in the forest, and they go 
in search of him. When approached by the strangers, he 
does not, of course, acknowledge himself a physician, and 
they proceed to extract the admission by means of the good 
wife's formula. They tell him that the king's daughter is 
desperately ill, and that he will be well paid for his serv- 
ices. So what with the blows and the promise of money, 
he agrees to accompany them. When he is taken to the 
palace he is greatly embarrassed upon finding that the 
princess is in a fair way to choke to death, because of a fish 
bone in her throat, that no one has been able to extract. His 
native wit comes to his rescue. Left alone, at his request, 
with the princess, he makes such comical grimaces and con- 
tortions that the girl, at first astonished, presently has a 
laughing fit that expels the fish bone. The king heaps gifts 
upon him, but he is loath to let such a learned man depart 
until certain ailing subjects in his domain have been treated 

38 



FABLIAUX 

also. The woodsman, unable to refuse, and altogether non- 
plused, requests, at a venture, that all the invalids be gath- 
ered together in the hall of the palace. When they are 
assembled, he has a fire kindled in the great chimney, and 
announces that the sole means of effectual cure involves a 
great sacrifice. The sickest one among them all must throw 
himself into the flames, where he will be quickly consumed. 
The others must then swallow his ashes, which will immedi- 
ately restore them to health. The only problem is to deter- 
mine which is the sickest person. In this dilemma, all the 
patients hasten to declare themselves well. Thereupon the 
amateur physician insists that they so declare themselves to 
the king. The monarch is delighted, and so enriches the 
peasant that he no longer finds it expedient to beat his wife 
in order that she may be occupied in his absence. 

The fable (Latin, fabula) is also considered a spontaneous 
creation of the prehistoric history of the nations. There have 
always been fables ; in the literature of every nation you will 
find these tales to which the imagination contributes less 
than is supplied by observation and the art of the narrator. 
The fable generally conveys a moral, though it is not always 
didactic throughout. The most famous are the Indian fables 
called Pilpay. 1 The Greek fables also trace their origin to 
the Orient, for iEsop (sixth century B.C.) was a Phrygian 
slave and he is the supposed originator 2 of the beast fable, 
called after him the iEsopic fables. Through the inter- 
mediary of the Latin compilations, of Avianus (collected 
from Greek fables which were called JEsop) and of Komulus 
(Phasdrian and Byzantine fables), iEsop became very pop- 
ular in the Middle Ages and it was customary to give the 
name Ysopets (little iEsops) to all collections of fables. One 

1 Pilpay, or Bidpai, the Arabic translation of the P-ahlavi translation of 
the original Sanskrit Pantchatantra, a celebrated book of fables and 
considered the most ancient source of fables. Benfey traces the word 
Bidpai or Pilpay to the Sanskrit vidyapate (in Arabic, bidbah), meaning 
master of sciences, according to which Bidpai is not the name of an indi- 
vidual. Vapereau's Dictionnaire des Litteratures says " Pilpay or Bidpay 
is another name for Vishnu-Sarma, Indian (Hindoo) fabulist." 

2 Some of the fables attributed to ^Esop were discovered in recent years 
by Dr. Brugsch Pascha to have been drawn from Egyptian sources which 
date to fourteen centuries B.C. 

39 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

of the largest and most interesting of these collections was 
composed by Marie de France, which she translated from an 
English collection. 

The Ysopets were transmitted in the Middle Ages by 
the clerics; but independently of this there were in oral cir- 
culation " contes " of animals which differed from the fable 
because they offered no moral aim but only strove to be 
amusing. A great many of these " contes " make a point of 
the quarrel between the wolf and the fox, who with his finesse 
and subtle treachery plays him a thousand tricks to which 
the wolf in spite of his greater strength and ferocity invari- 
ably falls a victim. Quite a number of these tales originated 
with the people and were collected and put into verse by the 
clerics. To this collection they added other fables borrowed 
from antiquity or of Germanic origin, but almost all pro- 
ceeded from oral transmission and not from books. This 
collection grew until there were twenty-six poems of the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries forming the great beast epic 
of the Roman de Benart (The Story of the Fox). Sainte- 
Beuve writes : * ' The satirical masterpiece of the thirteenth 
century is the Renart— a, production surpassing all others in 
its importance and popularity. It is a vast parody embrac- 
ing a collection of all the gossip of the fireside. It echoes 
the rancor of the small against the great, and expresses the 
political or religious audacity of statesmen, jongleurs, monks, 
scholars. It is also animated with that imperious spirit 
against women, which is so strongly and so repugnantly em- 
phasized in many of the fabliaux. ' ' The myth explaining the 
genesis of the animals in Renart runs : 

Les Evain assauvagissoient 
Et les Adam apprivoisoient. 1 

which is explained thus: When God banished Adam and 
Eve from the earthly paradise, he gave them a miraculous 
rod. When. Adam struck the waters of the sea with this rod, 
a sheep emerged, but when Eve in her turn used it, a wolf 

1 See he Roman de Renart, published by E. Martin. 
(Eve made them wild 
Adam made them tame.) 
40 



FABLIAUX 

rushed from the waves and carried off the sheep. Adam 
again striking the waters, a dog appeared which pursued the 
wolf. Thus it continued, Adam causing to appear the gentle 
domestic animals, and Eve the ferocious beasts and mischief- 
makers. 

The Benart in brief is an immense cycle— an epitome of 
the spirit of opposition; and it affords a complete picture of 
the Middle Ages. What seems confusion, incoherence even, 
is but an expression of historical truth. In the French Mid- 
dle Ages, we observe a chaos of disorganized forces working 
to destroy themselves : the ancient world and the modern 
world, the Germanic traditions and the Roman traditions, 
the feudal rights and the communal liberties, 1 reason and 
faith, Church and State. All that proceeds from this chaos 
—morals, laws, arts, sciences, philosophy, theology — is af- 
fected by the tumult. Hence the character of the Benart— a 
gigantic creation, or rather, compilation, presenting a bizarre 
mixture of ignorance and erudition, of details gross, fastid- 
ious, discordant, of light and lively ebullitions. It stretches 
from one end of the Middle Ages to the other, gathering the 
inspiration of each generation, growing with the follies and 
the wisdom of each epoch. It is a collective work erected 
by the contributions of the public mind— " like those great 
cathedrals, now building, now stationary during centuries, 
on which entire generations have labored, to which thousands 
of artists have devoted their lives and their chisels, and 
then died unknown. So die the poets of the Benart." 

Most of the authors seem to have been clerics, only three 
of whom (authors of the sixteenth, twelfth, and ninth 
branches) are known— Pierre de Saint-Cloud, Richard de 
Lison, a Norman trouvere and an abbot of La Croiz in Brie : 

Uns prestres de la Croiz en Brie 
A mis son estude et s'entende 
A fere une novele branche 
De Renart qui tant sot de gauche. 3 

1 Louis XI, the greatest tyrant, abolished serfdom. 

2 A priest of La Croiz in Brie employed his learning and intelligence in 
making a new version of Renart which knew so many tricks. 

41 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

In these poems we are introduced to animals with human 
characters— some of which bear artificial names and others 
the names in familiar spech. To begin with Renart: this is 
the animal known in French as renard (fox), but which the 
Middle Ages knew as goupil. Renart was a proper name 
used by the poets, and the poems became so popular that 
Renart was substituted for the true or primitive one. In all 
these poems the goupil appears under the name of Renart— 
together with the wolf, Ysengrin; the lion, Noble; the bear, 
Brun; the cock, Chantecler; the leopard, Firapel; the stag, 
Brichemer; the ass, Bernart; the cat, Tyber; the vulture, 
Escoffle; the badger, Grimbert; the monkey, Cointeriaux; 
the sheep, Belin; etc., nearly all, beginning with Ysengrin, 
the victims of the astute Renart. This ingenious transfor- 
mation of individualizing the heroes and giving them proper 
names is supposed to have originated in Northern France in 
the eleventh century. 

The most important branch and the masterpiece of the 
collection is the Judgment of Renart x : After having been 
summoned thrice in vain, Renart is brought before the 
tribunal of the king of animals— Noble, the lion. Accused 
of many misdemeanors, this intrepid scorner of the law is 
convicted and condemned to die. The king has a scaffold 
erected to punish Renart in view of the whole court, but the 
sly fellow steps before the throne with downcast and penitent 
mien, confesses all his sins and promises as a penance to make 
a pilgrimage across the sea to the Holy Land. The king, 
greatly touched, grants this favor. One of the finest episodes 
of the ancient Renart is the master rascal's adventures with 
Chantecler, the cock. In this encounter wits are well matched, 
and Renart learns a lesson. 

The first poems or branches were characterized by a 
natural and simple style with nothing of the satirical: a 
pleasant parody of society. But gradually coarseness, satire 
and allegory were introduced until all semblance of the orig- 
inal idea was lost and incoherence abounded. Finally, satire 
alone under a thin disguise marked the last sequels in Le 

1 From this branch proceeded the poem of Reinaert de Vos in Flemish, 
which was the source of Goethe's Reineke Fuchs. 

42 



FABLIAUX 

Couronnement de Benart, second half of the thirteenth cen- 
tury; Benart le Nouveau by Jacquemard Gelee, of Lille, in 
1288, and in Benart le Contrefait by an unknown author 
from Troyes in the commencement of the fourteenth century. 
A French writer calls it a comic-heroic epic which surpasses 
in grandeur and power the works of iEsop and of Phsedrus, 
and recalls by its spontaneity the Indian fable, as it an- 
nounces in parts the finesse of La Fontaine. 

The chansons de geste were always sung as long as they 
flourished, but with the introduction of the romance in verse 
and prose came the custom of recital. Although the profes- 
sional content's were obliged to determine upon some definite 
form for their stories, these were not written and conse- 
quently they were lost except a cant e-f able (or chant e-f able), 
Aucassin et Nicolette, written in the twelfth century, partly 
in prose, partly in verses (hence the name) of seven syllables 
with assonance. This charming and idyllic love story by an 
unknown author said to have lived in the time of Louis VII 
(1130), has been admirably translated into English by 
Andrew Lang. There are two other notable translations by 
F. W. Bourdillon and Laurence Housman. Whoever the 
author was, he was a true poet and a consummate artist, for 
he wove a story in the alternate prose and verse of the cante- 
fable that is immortal with the dewy freshness of youth. 

The story tells how Aucassin, the only son of Count Garin 
of Beaucaire, falls in love with a captive Paynim maiden, 
Nicolette, who had been sold to the captain-at-arms of Beau- 
caire. The father vainly tries to cure his son of his infatua- 
tion, and finally throws Aucassin in prison and determines 
to have Nicolette made away with. Nicolette escapes and 
builds herself a bower in a forest, where she is discovered by 
Aucassin after his release from prison. Together the lovers 
take flight by ship and are borne to a strange country, the 
country of the King of Torelore. But the Saracens descend 
upon Torelore and both Aucassin and Nicolette are taken 
captive. They are placed on different ships and become 
separated in a storm. Aucassin finally makes his way back 
to Beaucaire after an absence of three years and finds that his 
parents are dead ; so he succeeds his father as Count of Beau- 
caire. 

43 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Nicolette is taken to Carthage, and is discovered to be 
the long-lost daughter of the reigning king. Her father tries 
to marry her to another Paynim king, so she steals away and 
takes up her abode in a seaport town. After a time she dis- 
guises herself as a harper by staining her face and attiring 
herself in male garb. With viol in hand she sails away in 
a ship, and after much wandering comes at last to Provence 
and makes her way through the country till she comes to 
the castle of Beaucaire. In the disguise of the harper she 
sings a song to Aucassin of the love of Aucassin and Nicolette, 
and he eagerly questions her, for he has never ceased to 
think of " Nicolette, ma tres douce mie, que je tant aim." 1 
He is then told all about the adventures of Nicolette, and how 
she was a daughter of the King of Carthage. Aucassin begs 
the supposed harper to go in quest of her, and Nicolette 
promises that soon she will bring his love to him. She rests 
for eight days, removes the stain from her face and clothes 
herself in rich silks. Then she sends for Aucassin, and the 
happily united lovers fall into each other's arms and are 
wedded on the following day. This in brief is one of the 
most charming stories that has been told in any age. 

Such are the tales whose origin, according to Gaston Paris, 
is lost in the buried past of India — tales lovely, mocking, shock- 
ing, simple, complex ; tales proceeding through many mediums 
from the fatherland of Buddha to the world of Mohammed, 
thence passing westward into the communities of Picardy 
and France, and floating with the current of popular tradi- 
tion to swell the ever-quickening stream of literature. 

Many of the fabliaux are concerned with persons and 
themes borrowed from ancient literature : we meet Narcissus, 
Pyramus, and Thisbe, the story of Aristotle. The authors 
of most of these stories are unknown. The names of certain 
writers of fabliaux have been preserved— among them those 
of Gautier le Long, Jean Bodel, Jacques of Baisieux, Jean 
the Gaul of Aubespierre, and Rutebeuf, one of the most 
talented and versatile writers of the thirteenth century who 
wrote a series of fables satirizing the times. Like the epic 
song, like the lyric poems of the South, the fabliaux have had 
their European influence— an influence just as great as that 
1 Nicolette, my sweet lady, whom I love so well. 
44 



FABLIAUX 

of the lyrics and the epics, principally in Italy, Germany, 
and England: Boccaccio, Ariosto, Heinrich Glichezare, and 
Chaucer are among those who borrowed from this treasure 
lore. This genre of literature disappeared in the fifteenth 
century and its place was taken by the novel and the farce. 
But through the Italians it returned to France and was re- 
newed in the works of Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, the 
incomparable La Fontaine and others. Petit de Julleville 
says the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries belong to the 
fabliau, and the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to the 
farce; the second was but a transformation of the first, put 
into dialogue, for the principle of the two genres is per- 
ceptibly the same. 

Popular poetry was not always narrative. Often it was 
didactic or satirical; or, in the absence of any strongly 
defined character, it was, for lack of a better definition, what 
is commonly called "light" poetry. Again, the people of the 
Middle Ages were very fond of knowledge and instruction, 
and of putting into a single book all they knew and all they 
wished to teach others. The poems so compiled were called 
Bibles — a title meant to indicate, it would seem, that they 
contained nothing but truths. The Bible of Guyot de Provins 
is a universal satire, but is particularly directed against the 
pope, the cardinals, and the higher clergy. Guyot is the 
"Rabelais of the thirteenth century, but with less talent." 
The Bible of Hugues de Berzy belongs in the same class, but 
it is less satirical. 

"Poetry of circumstance" in the Middle Ages was vari- 
ously entitled Sayings (Dits), Disputes, Debates, Disputa- 
tions, Battle, Legacies (Legs), Testaments, Reveries, Medleys 
(Fatraisies). The Testaments or Legacies begin at the end 
of the thirteenth century. These are curious compositions in 
which the poet, representing himself as dying, makes ironical 
bequests to the objects of his irony. Such is the form which 
the so-called Memoires assume in the Middle Ages. 

As all human creations are evolved, and do not spring 
complete from the head of one man— as Pallas Minerva 
from the head of Jove; so the unique Roman de la Rose 
had a prehistoric existence in the French literary conscious- 
ness before Guillaume de Lorris gave it its final form, and 

45 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Jean de Meung supplied the sequel. To this extraordinary 
product of the French mind — the Romance of the Rose — Gus- 
tave Lanson has devoted a preliminary chapter dealing with 
its place in didactic and moral literature. 

Between the periods of lyric and of narrative poetry, there 
arises a considerable body of didactic verse of a truly moral 
character. In view of the national French nature as ex- 
pressed in the middle classes, it could not well be otherwise. 
French literature could not remain indefinitely isolated from 
serious reflection and philosophic thought, or indefinitely 
given over to haphazard sensation and the caprices of the 
imagination and fancy. The spirit of the laity could not re- 
main always closed to the science of the clerics. At first 
the laity were strangers to that powerful movement of ideas 
proceeding from the schools and convents from the eleventh 
to the fourteenth centuries — a movement chiefly registered 
in the great Latin and scholastic thirteenth-century works, 
the Speculum Majus of Vincent de Beauvais, the Summa 
Theologia of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Opus Majus of Roger 
Bacon. The auditors of Roland and of Renart did not trou- 
ble themselves much about universal ideas and principles. 
Their religion caused them to fast on Lenten days, and to 
open their purses to the church and to the poor; but it did 
not inspire them to reflect on the Trinity or on the relation 
between soul and body. They were children who loved to 
listen only to stories. But gradually the curiosity of these 
children awoke. Kings, princes, and lords, having received, 
for that time, a superior education, observed the popular 
interest in these clerical studies; the clerics, on their part, 
wishing to extend the sphere of their influence, communi- 
cated something of the science which until then the Latin 
language had kept hidden from the knowledge of the pop- 
ulace. In some way, learned literatures began to filter into 
popular literature. From the twelfth century on we see all 
kinds of didactic works (didactic, of course, in the unscien- 
tific manner of the medieval, though erudite mind) finding 
their way into French— works on natural history, physics, 
medicine, morality, philosophy; books on cookery and eti- 
quette. 

Among the most ancient scientific writings in the vulgar 

46 



FABLIAUX 

language we find the Bestiaires (from the Latin bestia, 
beast), the Lapidaires (from the Latin lapis, idis, precious 
stone), and the Volucraires (from the Latin volucris, bird) 
— compilations of miraculous and puerile stories concerning 
beasts and birds and precious stones, which disclose a 
" science " more fantastic, more stupendous, than all the 
adventures of the Knights of the Round Table— productions 
all the more extravagant because the description of natural 
things is mixed with allegorical moralities. The Middle Ages 
was the epoch, par excellence, of allegory; in each animal, 
the people seemed to see the vices and virtues of men, and 
to point a moral in their descriptions of them. The two most 
celebrated Bestiaires of French literature are the Bestiaire 
d' Amour, of Richard de Fournival of Amiens, and the Besti- 
aire divin of Guillaume, cleric of Normandy. The Lapi- 
daires in the Middle Ages were treatises on the pretended 
curative or preservative qualities of precious stones. The 
most popular of the Lapidaires was that of Marbode, Bishop 
of Rennes (twelfth century), who took his material from a 
Greek original, and whose work was translated several times 
into French in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. A 
French critic tells us that the study of these three forms of 
literature with their symbolical allegories is absolutely nec- 
essary for a comprehension of the Middle Ages. Other Lapi- 
daires and other Bestiaires followed, attesting the success 
of the literary genre and the scientific ineptitude of the 
readers. 

From the twelfth century the lay public was enabled to 
read, in Anglo-Norman, Boethius's De Consolatione — a fund- 
amental work of scholastic science, and a classic commented 
upon in the schools up to the time of the Renaissance. Later, 
Aristotle's Ethics was translated. The principal parts of 
the Bible and the evangelistic works were also translated, 
or imitated, first in verse, and then in prose ; and to such an 
extent that the church was sometimes alarmed to observe 
the sources of her dogma too liberally opened to the bold 
ignorance of the laity. The spirit of lay society was fur- 
ther modified by the sermons in vulgar or popular language 
delivered from the pulpits, from the ninth and tenth cen- 
turies. The Debat de VAme et du Corps (Debate of the 

47 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Body and the Soul), which is found both in Latin and in 
French after the first third of the twelfth century, affords 
a general view of Christian morality, with its vigorous ar- 
raignment of the body as an instrument for the debasement 
and damnation of the soul. Moral literature, as one may 
easily understand, often turns to satire ; and the exceedingly 
vivid description of the actual world, and of man's ordinary 
occupations and inclinations, sometimes found in these moral 
works, lends them a peculiar flavor. The thirteenth century 
was also the century of allegories. Allegory in the litera- 
ture of the Middle Ages presents itself under three aspects: 
First, as a philosophical method of interpreting the phenomena 
of nature; second, as the abstracting process of the mind 
which embodies itself in the rhetorical figure of personifica- 
tion ; third, as a specific form of poetry. 1 In this species of 
literature distinction was attained by Raoul de Houdan, 
with his La Voie du Paradis 2 (The ; Way to Paradise), his 
Ailes de la prouesse 3 (Wings of Prowess), and his strange 
Songe d'Enfer (Dream of Hell), wherein he feasts with good 
appetite at the table of Lucifer in company with fat usurers 
and hoary sinners. 

Allegory reached its greatest popularity in the famous 
Roman de la Rose, an allegorical and didactic poem inspired 
by Ovid's Metamorphoses and his Be Arte amandi. The 
author in the first part of the poem calls upon Macrobius 
to witness that dreams are not always deceptive. 4 The 
Roman de la Rose is the " art of love put into action and 
inclosed in the setting of a dream." In spite of its conti- 
nuity as fiction, it is really two distinct works which belong 
neither to the same time nor to the same author ; nor do they 
breathe the same spirit. Of the 22,817 verses as found in 
Fr. Michel's edition, the first 4,669 were composed about 
1237 by a young cleric of Orleans, Guillaume de Lorris; the 

1 See Courthope's History of English Poetry. 

2 Disputed by F. Zenker ( Ueber die Echtheit zweier dem Raoul von 
Houdenc zugeschriebener Werke). 

3 Called also Le Roman des Ailes. 

4 Alluding to Macrobius's Commentary of Cicero's Dream of Scipio 
(Commentarius ex Cicerone in somnium Scipionis, generally known as In 
somnium Scipionis expositio). 

48 



FABLIAUX 

remaining verses were written some forty years later by an- 
other cleric of Orleans, Jean Clopinel de Meung. There is 
nothing more unlike indeed than the two poems and the two 
poets. The one poet, a delicate spirit, ingenious and full 
of mannerisms, wrote to please polite society; the other — a 
sharp, violent, cynical genius — hurled stinging words at 
the superstitions and beliefs of the times. Guillaume de 
Lorris sets forth the chivalrous, religious and sentimental 
mysticism of the preceding age. He sums up with preten- 
tious erudition all the amorous metaphysics of his time as 
the beginning of his poem announces: 

Ci est le Roman de la Rose 

Oil l'Art d'Amors est tote enclose. 1 

The second part of the Roman de la Rose announces in its 
spirit the arrival of a new society. A distinct work of its 
own, it is yet less a continuation than a counterpart of that 
of de Lorris. From the midst of insipid sentimentalities 
there proceeded the liveliest, the boldest, and sometimes the 
most brutal invectives against the times. It is no longer 
the art of love but an encyclopedia of bitter satire. The 
bizarre mixture of mystic tenderness, chivalrous gallantry 
and love, is followed by an overflow of unbridled sensuality, 
a seditious emancipation of the flesh from the spirit, in which 
Jean de Meung with scholastic subtlety launched forth into 
political and satirical dissertations against beliefs, supersti- 
tions and the monachal institutions. The love idyl became 
a political pamphlet. The women he held in the profoundest 
contempt and heaped most cruel insults upon them with 
bold and cynical expression. 

The scene of the poem unfolds in a dream and in spring- 
time — a double allegory which in itself reveals the spirit of 
the whole work. The contents may be summed up briefly as 
follows : the poet or author who calls himself Amant (lover) 
dreams that he sees a transparent palace surrounded by trees 
and beautiful gardens, illumined by a roseate light — the 

1 This is the story of the Rose, 
Where the art of love is all inclosed. 
5 49 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

dwelling of Deduit (Love's Pleasure). The gate is opened for 
him by Oy sense (Idleness) and he meets a series of impalpa- 
ble and very symbolic phantoms: Beaute (Beauty), Doux- 
Regard (Sweet glances), Richesse (Riches), Dieu d' Amour 
(God of love), Jeunesse (Youth), etc. In this magic garden 
Amant sees on a rosebush a Rose of fascinating beauty, sur- 
rounded, however, by thorny hedges which he could never 
have penetrated without the aid of Bel-Accueil (Good-Recep- 
tion). Finally, he succeeds with the help of Bel-Accueil in 
kissing the Rose, for which the Rose and Bel-Accueil are 
incarcerated and Amant is in despair. Here Guillaume de 
Lorris stops and fifty years later Jean de Meung continues 
and introduces two new characters: Dame Nature and Faux- 
Semblant (False Appearance). A third actor, Dame Raison 
— Reason — already employed by de Lorris, but now enlarged 
and transformed, occupies likewise a large place in this poem. 
Raison consoles Amant and Ami shows him how to reach 
the goal. (Here Jean de Meung holds dissertations on friend- 
ship, the golden age, and the origins of society.) This 
road is called Trop-Donner (Give too much) and Amant can- 
not pass. (Discourse on the infidelity of woman, and against 
marriage. Jean de Meung advocated woman's rights and 
free love.) Now comes Dieu d' Amour with his twenty-four 
companions: Noblesse de Cozur (Nobility of Heart), Beaute, 
JeunessCy etc., and these supported by Nature and Genius 
take possession of the tower where the Rose is imprisoned. 
Amant plucks the Rose — then day breaks and the poet awakes. 
In this latter part, Jean de Meung launches forth into 
diatribes against the monks and celibacy. The poem concludes 
with the following verse : 

Explicit li Rommans la Rose; 
Ou Tart d'Amors est toute enclose: 
Nature rit, si com moi semble, 
Quant hie et haec joingnent ensemble. 1 

1 Here ends the Romance of the Rose, 
In which the whole art of Love is inclosed; 
Nature smiles, if she resembles me, 
When this and that come together. 
(Love) (Nature) 
50 



FABLIAUX 

Lenient writes of the Roman de la Rose: this artificial 
product of the French mind — laden with illuminations some- 
times graceful, but often shocking and contradictory— pre- 
served its popularity and its splendor till the renaissance of 
letters. From Homer to Dante, no poem has so aroused 
the interest of men; none has caused more controversies 
and commentaries. To what, then, did it owe this singular 
vogue? First of all, to love— for love was the dominant 
passion in the Middle Ages; and, in the second place, to 
satire. To graft satire on gallantry, Juvenal on Ovid, is 
a bizarre idea, without doubt, yet it gratified the two most 
prevalent French passions, slander and love. Nature, in 
this poem, is no less boastful and learned than Reason. If 
she has read history less, she knows, on the other hand, the 
secret of things. She takes it upon herself to explain to us 
the origin of the world, the movement of the stars, the suc- 
cession of animal life. All these revelations— compounded 
of reminiscences of Utopian ideas, agitated in the schools of 
Greece and Alexandria, and overlaid with the biblical tradi- 
tions — produced a marvelous effect upon the contemporary 
imagination. They unquestionably confirmed the notion that 
Jean de Meung— the most learned man of his century, even 
in the judgment of the great Gerson 1 — had hidden away 
in his work the secret of the philosopher's stone. This free- 
thinker of the fourteenth century refuted popular opinion on 
the influence of the comets. He did not believe that their 
appearance announced the death of a prince or some other 
great personage— for the body of a king, when he is dead, 
did not differ from that of a cart driver : 

Car leur cors ne vaut une pome 
Plus que li cors d'un charetier 
Ou d'un clerc ou d'un escuyer.* 

Three centuries later, in the reign of Louis XVI, Bayle, 
writing his Thoughts on the comet and ridiculing popular 

1 Jean Charlier, called Jean de Gerson (1353-1429), theologian and chan- 
cellor of the University of Paris. 

' For their corpses are not worth one apple more than the body of a carter 
or of a cleric or of a groom. 

51 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

prejudice, performed an act of boldness to which the in- 
timidated genius of Bernouilli humbly bowed. That daring, 
violent, even cynical naturalism, bravely diffused through 
the work of Jean de Meung, connects him, despite differ- 
ence of time, with the philosophers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. In this respect one may consider him as a true ances- 
tor of Jean Jacques Rousseau; like him, he is an apostle 
of instincts and passion; like him, he plies the biting anger 
of the misanthrope, swells with the rebellious aspirations of 
the tribune, the noisy and inflamed rhetoric of the pam- 
phleteer; like him, finally, he mingles with the recital of a 
romantic adventure those long, moralizing dissertations in 
which Nature and Reason delight, and which Saint-Preux 
and Julie in Jean Jacques's Nouvelle Helo'ise do not disdain. 
The political boldness of Rousseau's Contrat Social, the men- 
acing doubts of the Discours sur Vinegalite des Conditions 
are already contained in embryo in the Roman de la Rose. 
The origins of society, of royal power, of tithes and taxes, 
of property itself— all is put in question by Jean de Meung. 
Voltaire seemed to shake the throne of Louis XV with his 
famous verse. " Le premier qui fut roi fut un soldat heu- 
reux 1 (" the first who was king was a fortunate soldier "). 
Jean de Meung is quite differently energetic and brutal in his 
attitude toward royalty, of which he is, however, the servant 
and ally: 

Ung grant vilain entr'eus eslurent, 
Le plus ossu de quan quil furent 
Le plus corsu et le greignor. 
Si le firent prince et seignor. 
Cil jura qu 'adroit les tendroit 
Et que lor loges deffendroit. 2 

This audacious pamphleteer, this friend of the University, 
this enemy of popes and monks, wore himself the frock of 

1 The allusion being to Merowig, first Merovingian monarch, who de- 
rived his kingship from the people. 

2 They elected a tall villain (rustic) among them, the boniest that there 
was, the stoutest and the tallest, and made him prince and lord. He 
swore that he would skillfully protect them, and would defend their 
dwellings. 

52 



FABLIAUX 

the preaching friar; he lived rich, powerful, tranquil, hon- 
ored; and was buried with great pomp in the cloister of the 
Jacobins. 

Unfortunately, says Lanson, Jean de Meung has not, 
like Dante, created a form which would have insured to his 
thought the eternity of beauty. He failed to be a great 
artist. The most apparent and usual beauties of art are 
wanting in his work; he cares nothing about the science of 
composition, proportion, propriety. This Roman de la 
Rose is a jumble, a chaos, a strange tissue of the most un- 
related subjects. Digressions, parentheses of five hundred 
verses, cost him no qualms. The work is a sequence of pieces 
which cling together as they may, and which follow each 
other sometimes without joining. Yet in spite of its in- 
coherence, the entire poem gives the impression of something 
vigorous and powerful. This buoyancy of ideas and argu- 
ments, poured forth incessantly in eighteen thousand verses, 
without pause, without rest; the fervor and flow of style — 
exact, incisive, efficacious ; the precision of demonstration ; the 
most complicated and subtle exposition; the robust alacrity 
with which the poet carries an enormous burden of facts and 
reasonings ; the movement which, in spite of inevitable languor 
here and there, imposes upon the whole the confused yet fruit- 
ful mass of scholastic erudition and boldly original inventions 
— all this imparts to the work a somewhat vulgar force which, 
nevertheless, is not without beauty. He closes worthily the 
Middle Ages with a masterpiece which restores them and 
destroys them at the same time. By his philosophy, which 
consists essentially of the identity and the sovereignty of 
Nature and Reason, he is the first link of the chain connect- 
ing Rabelais, Montaigne, Moliere — to which Voltaire also is 
attached, and even, in certain respects, Boileau. 

The sphere of the influence of the Roman de la Rose may 
be measured by the vast literature which has been amassed 
on this production in France and in all countries where Ro- 
mance literature is cherished. There are more than one 
hundred and fifty manuscripts of this allegory, sixty-seven of 
which are in the National Library in Paris. It was the sub- 
ject of innumerable attacks : Gerson, one of the most bitter 
denouncers, wrote one hundred years after its completion: 

53 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Arrachez, hommes sages, arrachez ce livre dangereux des mains de 
vos fils et de vos filles. Si je possedais un seul exemplaire du Roman 
de la Rose, et qu'il fut unique, valut-il mille livres d'argent — je le 
brulerais plutot que de le vendre pour le publier tel qu'il est. Si je 
savais que l'auteur n'eut pas fait penitence, je ne prierais jamais pour 
lui, pas plus que pour Judas; et les personnes qui lisent son livre a 
mauvais dessein, augmentent ses tourments, soit qu'il souffre en enfer, 
soit qu'il gemisse en purgatoire. 1 

At the same time Christine de Pisan defended her sex against 
the calumnies of Jean de Meung in her Lettres sur le Roman 
de la Rose. But the poem found its defenders in the learned 
doctors and magistrates of high rank. Its popularity was 
so great that the priests cited quotations from it just as they 
did from the Bible. When printing was introduced it was 
published several times, and Marot made a modernized edi- 
tion which was popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. Later editions were made by Meon in 1814 and 
F. Michel in 1864. 

Gaston Paris writes: For a long time, and this was a 
grave error, the Roman de la Rose was regarded as an open- 
ing in French literature; in reality it opened one period 
and closed another. The spontaneous, unconscious, almost 
infantine dream of the Middle Ages ended, or only reap- 
peared in transient intervals; modern literature, whose es- 
sential elements are philosophical thought and knowledge 
of antiquity made its debut. 

1 Tear, wise men, tear this dangerous book from the hands of your sons 
and daughters. If I possessed only one copy of the Romance of the Rose, 
and it was the only one, valued at a thousand livres, I would sooner burn 
it than sell it for publication, such as it is. If I knew that the author had 
not done penance, I would no more pray for him than for Judas; and the 
persons who read his book with an evil object increase his torments whether 
he suffer in hell or groan in purgatory. 



CHAPTER IV 

CHRONICLES AND HISTORY 

The first interesting chronicle in France was written 
by Gregoire de Tours. The famous Chronicle of Turpin, 
a legendary history of Charlemagne and Roland also in 
Latin dates from the eleventh century. It was falsely at- 
tributed to Archbishop Turpin, but recent researches proved 
that the authors were two monks in Spain. Although a 
fable and full of anachronisms this history was considered 
a great authority and inspired the songs of many of the 
trouveres. 

Suger— Minister under Louis VII and Abbot of Saint 
Denis— caused to be gathered in his abbey all the known 
Latin chronicles that had been collected in the first centuries of 
national history, together with all the registers in which every 
convent transcribed the facts of local and general history. 
With these documents as a basis, the great Chronicles of 
France or Chronicles of Saint Denis were compiled. They be- 
gin by telling that the French are descended from the 
Trojans — Francus, son of Hector, having come to establish 
himself in Gaul, with a colony, at the same time that his com- 
patriot, ^Eneas, settled in Italy and became the progenitor of 
the Romans. The history of the earlier succeeding centuries 
is treated somewhat in the same fashion, and when the editor 
had the choice of a simple narration by an historian or the 
embellished story of a legend, he never hesitated : he always 
chose the legend. About 1174 Gamier de Pont- Saint e-Max- 
ence wrote the Vie de Saint Thomas de Cantorbery, four 
years after the hero's death. It is one of the oldest works 
written in the language of the Ile-de-France, as it is also 
one of the most remarkable historical poems of the Middle 
Ages. 

55 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

These chronicles mostly written in Latin and relat- 
ing chiefly to foreign events were not therefore typically 
French. French history proper dated from the Crusades. 
The events which took place in the Holy Land under the 
French Crusades, were of necessity recorded and trans- 
mitted to the people in France. At first these histories were 
in verse, epic form, but with Villehardouin 's nine years' 
history of the fourth French Crusade, French prose history 
was born. Thenceforth every work which employed epic 
verse as a medium for historical facts was accidental and, 
as it were, a step backward in the development of this 
branch of literature. Fourteenth-century poems, like the 
Combat des T rente 1 (Combat of the Thirty) and the Life 
of Bertrand du Guesclin are but sterile records in literary 
history. 

The development of prose during four centuries, from the 
twelfth to the fifteenth, is strikingly illustrated by a typical 
historical work of each century: Geoffroi de Villehardouin 's 
De la Conquete de Constantinople, the oldest French histori- 
cal work; Jean de Joinville's Histoire de Saint-Louis; Jean 
Froissart's Chroniques; and Philippe de Commines' Me- 
moir es. Geoffroi de Villehardouin, born at the Chateau de 
Villehardouin in Champagne about 1160, was at first Ma- 
rechal of Champagne and later of Roumelia. His Memoires 
are the account of that extraordinary expedition, whose object 
was the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre, and which resulted 
in the taking of Constantinople and the establishment of a 
French empire in the East. Villehardouin was the real pro- 
moter of the crusade. His works at first were influenced by 
the chansons de geste in regard to form and color, but later 
he definitely disengaged history from the epic which had 
at that time degenerated into romance. He took hold of 
living events of which he himself had been an eyewitness, 
and recorded them without recourse to his imagination. The 

1 A poem on -the battle fought in 1350 at Ploermel between thirty 
Bretons and thirty English, under the command of Beaumanoir. Of its 
three hundred verses by an unknown poet, a clever imitator of the old 
trouveres, this famous verse has been retained : 

Bois ton sang, Beaumanoir, Drink your own blood, Beaumanoir, 
La soif te passera. To relieve your thirst. 

56 



CHRONICLES AND HISTORY 

details, precise and characteristic, are an invaluable study of 
the manners and customs of the epoch. 

Nearly a century elapsed between the memoirs of Ville- 
hardouin and those of Joinville, during which French cul- 
ture was given a decided impetus by a great king and a 
great pope, Louis IX and Innocent III. Jean de Joinville was 
born about 1224 at the castle of Joinville, Chalons-sur-Marne, 
and educated at the courts of Provins and Troyes — two old 
cities of Champagne, at that time the abiding place of the 
masters of the Gaie Science. 1 At the call of the King of 
France, Joinville sold all his property, equipped ten cav- 
aliers and accompanied Louis IX on his first crusade. After 
the death of Louis, Joinville lived to see two succeeding 
reigns and the beginning of a third. It was at the request of 
the queen, wife of Louis le Hutin, that he dictated his 
Memoires, when he was more than ninety years old. He died 
in the beginning of the fourteenth century. Nisard writes: 
" Joinville has in common with Villehardouin the character 
of a Christian knight : the courage, the straightforwardness, 
the virtues of chivalry, without its illusions — a simple faith, 
free from clerical rule and without theological refinement. 
Joinville 's disputations with the founder of the Sorbonne, 
in the presence of Louis IX, who acted as judge between his 
seneschal and his chaplain, carry us to regions of thought and 
meditation far beyond that epoch of action and adventure." 

The foundation of the aforementioned Sorbonne was an 
event of great significance in its influence on French litera- 
ture and learning. It was a famous school of theology 
founded by Robert de Sorbon 2 in 1250, as a branch of the 
University of Paris, to assist poor theological students. The 
college became one of the most celebrated in the world and 
still exists as such. Before the revolution of 1789— during 
the progress of which it was suppressed— the Sorbonne was 

1 Gaie Science, or Gai Savoir, is the name given to the poetry of the 
trouveres and troubadours. 

2 Robert de Sorbon, or Sorbonne, was born at Sorbon, a little village 
near Rheims, in 1201. After receiving his degree as Doctor of Theology 
in Paris, he devoted himself to lectures, and acquired so great a repu- 
tation that St. Louis wished to hear him, and eventually chose him for 
his confessor. 

57 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

one of the four divisions of the Faculty of theology in 
Paris. It produced so many able theologians that its name 
was given to the entire faculty, and the students took the title 
of Doctors and Bachelors of the Sorbonne, even though they 
were not members of this college. Upon the reconstruction 
of the University under Napoleon I, the building erected for 
it by Richelieu, and still called the Sorbonne, was ceded to 
the city of Paris, on condition that the theological faculty in 
connection with the faculties of science and belles-lettres 
should remove there. 

The University of Paris x had been founded by bulls of 
Innocent III, in the years 1208, 1209, 1213, by the reunion of 
the Schools of Logic of la Montagne Sainte Genevieve, and 
the School of Theology of the Cloisters of Notre Dame ; so that 
it had actually existed before its official foundation, and by 
this foundation it was simply more strongly concentrated and 
organized. The schools of Paris were, since the eleventh 
century, extremely flourishing, and were a light for the whole 
of Europe. After the year 1208, the University was con- 
stituted in a regular manner. It was composed of four facul- 
ties : of theology, of canon law, of medicine, and of arts. The 
last named embraced what may be called secondary instruc- 
tion — from the third department as far as philosophy — and 
with an advanced course, from baccalaureate to doctorate. 
Logic was made the chief study. All the teaching was oral, 
and with infinite discussions. The career of the student was 
as follows. After a first examination he was proclaimed de- 
terminant; 2 after a second examination, licencie — and that 
qualified him for teaching; after a third examination, maitre 
es-arts (Master of Arts) — and then he was a professor of the 
faculty; finally, after still another examination, he received 
the degree of docteur. The Sorbonne branch of the University 

1 A great number of provincial universities were founded in France in 
imitation of the .University of Paris. Among them were Angers, Toulouse, 
founded 1229, and especially conspicuous in the fourteenth century; 
Montpellier, Avignon, Cahors, Grenoble, Orleans, Poictiers, Caen, Bourges. 

2 At the end of the fifteenth century the term determinant was changed 
to bachelier (bachelor). During the Middle Ages bachelier meant a candi- 
date for knighthood and was therefore a title relating to the nobility and 
not to the University. 

58 



CHRONICLES AND HISTORY 

of Paris * soon became a faculty of theology of the greatest 
importance ; it was truly a ' ' light, guide, and judge ' ' for the 
Church of France. A "Permanent Council, " Bossuet called 
it; a judge also of books, and books sometimes most foreign 
to its teachings. These were submitted to it by the author- 
ities for a decision as to whether they contained anything 
contrary to the religion of the State. Thus it was at the same 
time a Permanent Council and a Congregation of the Index 
—titles that made it most redoubtable. To return to its posi- 
tion in the Middle Ages: it was at that time a school of re- 
ligion, of law, and of a philosophy that was very subtle and 
ingenious and at times very profound. It created theologians 
and orators with dialectics concise and captious, and very 
skillful diplomats. That is why so many celebrated diplomats 
of the Middle Ages, and even of more modern times, were 
priests. Theology and scholarship were marvelous means 
by which to fortify, make supple, and sharpen men's minds 
— always provided their intellects were strong enough to sup- 
port this rigorous discipline. 

Jean Froissart, born at Valenciennes in Hainault about 
the year 1337, was the son of a painter of coats-of-arms. He 
was a churchman — in fact, a good canon, who had even, for 
some time, been a cure. Nevertheless, his history and his 
poems, as he himself says, are recitals only of war and love. 
He traveled in order to write history. According to Villemain, 
perhaps it might be said more truthfully that Froissart became 
an historian in order to travel. He set out for England, where 
he was warmly welcomed by the lords and ladies and where 
the queen, Philippa de Hainault, wife of Edward III, became 
his patroness. As her protege he composed love poems, but 
his great Chronicle was always uppermost, and the favor of 
princes enabled him to travel and improve his mind. He 
visited Scotland, at that time an unknown country. He ap- 
proached familiarly Edward, Prince of Wales (the Black 
Prince), and the great man of his century. He followed to 
Milan the Duke of Clarence, who went there to marry the 
daughter of Galeazzo II. 



1 Since 1896 the University of Paris has five branches: law, literature, 
the sciences, medicine, and theology (Sorbonne branch). 

59 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

After the death of Queen Philippa, he returned to his own 
country, and was appointed cure of Lestines, in the diocese of 
Cambrai. This office he discharged but a short time, return- 
ing to the more agreeable court life, and attaching himself 
to Wenceslas, Duke of Brabant, a generous prince who made 
verses. Froissart served him as secretary and poet ; he re- 
touched the verses of the duke, mingled his own with them, 
and united all in a romance entitled Meliador, or, the 
Knight of the Golden Sun. Froissart himself has told of 
his reception at the court of England, and how he presented 
his romance of Meliador to Richard II. This work is a his- 
tory, almost universal in treatment, of the States of Europe 
from the year 1322 to the end of the fourteenth century. 
Sometimes, by happy contrasts, adroit transitions, he related 
his own adventures along with historical facts. Froissart 's 
whole genius lies in his ability to tell a story; and he tells 
it well. No man had seen more countries ; above all, no man 
had seen them to better purpose. In the intervals of his 
voyages, and even in the course of his excursions, he wrote 
the chronicle of his time, and made verses. These were lais, 
virelais, rondeaux, and little poems— gallant, sentimental, or 
allegorical. The titles embrace: Li Horloge Amoureuse (The 
Horologe of Love) ; Li Debat du Cheval et du Levrier (The 
Dispute between the Horse and the Greyhound) ; Li Trettic 
de I'Epinette Amoureuse (The Story of the Love Coop) ; Li 
Trettie die Joli Buisson de Jo nee e (The Story of the Pleasing 
Grove of Youth) ; Le Paradis d 'Amour, etc. Freshness, grace, 
color — above all, naturalness — are what one finds in these 
amiable reveries. Froissart died about 1405 and Enguerrand 
de Monstrelet wrote a continuation of his ' ' chronicles, ' ' com- 
prising the years 1400 to 1444. This chonicle, although a 
faithful report of events, 1 is tiresome and wordy ; which called 
forth the criticism of Rabelais: " Ce long narre est plus 
baveux qu 'un pot a moustarde. ' ' 2 

An author's superiority consists in being, at once, of his 
time and out of his time; in expressing the thoughts of his 
contemporaries, and in having an individual expression of 

1 Monstrelet was in Compiegne when Jeanne d'Arc was taken prisoner. 

2 This long narrative is more slabbering than a mustard-pot. 

60 



CHRONICLES AND HISTORY 

his own. Such an author was Philippe de Commines, and 
according to Villemain, the most original French writer of 
the fifteenth century, because in addition to the naivete of 
this period, he was endowed with the mental stability of an- 
other epoch. In his Memoires one perceives a resemblance, 
in form and detail, to the romance of chivalry; at the same 
time there is disclosed a mind, serious and solid, that sees 
through all ruses, and judges with marvelous insight, the 
character, the form, and the objects of governments. Com- 
mines's work in marking the progress achieved by reason, 
government, and the art of living in the fifteenth century, 
exhibits the perfection of a recital at once judicious and 
naive. To a talent for story-telling is united political sagac- 
ity. Commines was the confidant, the historian, and the 
panegyrist of Louis XI, whose political astuteness and ability 
he has pictured with supreme expression and intelligence. 

The condemnation merited by Louis XI, says Augustin 
Thierry, and of which the future will not absolve him, rests 
on the blame the human conscience attaches to the memory 
of those who have believed that all means are good in im- 
posing upon facts the yoke of ideas. During Charles VIII 's 
reign, Commines was imprisoned for eight months at Loches, 
in one of the famous hanging cages called fillettes du roi, 
devised by Louis XI (also ascribed to Cardinal La Balu, one 
of the first to be " caged ")■ Later he was recalled to the 
favor of Charles VIII, served him as chamberlain, and ac- 
companied him on the expedition leading to the conquest of 
Naples. During Louis XII 's reign, he remained in the good 
graces of that king until his death. 

Alain Chartier (1390-1449), preceding Commines, earned 
the sobriquet of Father of French Eloquence by the force and 
eloquence of his prose style. In Le Curial he depicts in a 
fascinating manner the court life of Charles VII. In the 
Quadriloge invectif, four allegorical characters, Noblesse 
(Nobility), Clerge (Clergy), Roture (Commonalty), and 
Labour (Peasantry), all reproach each other for the evils 
of the Hundred Years' War, and seek a remedy. As a poet, 
he was mediocre, resorting too much to allegory, a common 
failing of the times influenced by the Roman de la Rose. Le 
Livre des Quatre Dames, considered his best poem, tells of four 

61 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ladies who have lost their sweethearts in the battle of Agin- 
eourt — one was killed, one taken prisoner, a third disappeared, 
and a fourth fled. The women dispute as to which of them 
is the most unhappy. Chartier was very popular at court 
on account of his grace and amiability of manner and his 
poetry. Estienne Pasquier tells the following anecdote : One 
day, Marguerite of Scotland, first wife of the Dauphin, 
later Louis XI, seeing Chartier asleep on a chair, approached 
and kissed him. This greatly surprised her companions, for 
" nature had given him a beautiful mind in an ugly body." 
The princess replied that she had not kissed the man, but the 
lips from which came so many " golden words." Of this 
story, one French critic remarks: " there is in this legend 
more real poetry than in all the works of Alain Chartier. ' ' 

As a prose writer, Chartier shows his close knowledge of 
the classics, and unconsciously, perhaps, imitates their style. 
In this way he may be considered a forerunner of the Renais- 
sance ; and this no doubt accounts for the esteem accorded to 
him later in the sixteenth century. A man of lofty ideas and 
noble sentiments, he strove to express them in clear and 
simple language. Estienne Pasquier compared Alain Chartier 
to Seneca. 



CHAPTER V 

THE THEATER IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

With all nations the theater owes its origin to religion. 
In the fifth century manifestations of dramatic taste and 
spirit were observed at the funeral of Sainte Radegonde, 
Queen of the Franks: two hundred nuns chanted a kind of 
elegy around her coffin, while others responded with lamenta- 
tions and mournful gestures from the windows of the mon- 
astery. The same circumstance is recorded of other impos- 
ing funerals. 

The religious drama in France was developed toward the 
tenth century from the liturgical texts amplified by the 
priests, clerics, and monks for the edification of the faithful. 
They intercalated the ceremonies of their cult with simple 
representations, the object of which was the teaching by 
demonstration of the dogmas. For Pentecost, the descent of 
the Holy Ghost was represented by doves and birds let loose 
in the churches. The Day of Ascension, Christ was repre- 
sented by a priest mounting the tribune. The demonstrations, 
which belonged to the Nativity, showed the priests as prophets 
passing in procession before the spectators announcing the 
coming of Christ. For Easter, scenes figurative of the 
Resurrection were represented. 

At first the liturgie drama was composed of a short text 
in Latin prose. Gradually the language became partly Latin 
and partly the popular idiom, with a gradual change from 
prose to verse. Finally, versification predominated; the 
popular language superseded the Latin, and the drama was 
detached from the service. 

Until the fifteenth century these religious dramas, were 
called jeux or drames, as the Drame des Prophetes du Christ, 

63 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

written in Latin in the eleventh century, the Drame d'Adam 
of the twelfth century, and the Jea de la Resurrection of the 
thirteenth century. Toward the fifteenth century, it became 
customary to represent these religious scenes by tableaux, for 
which a great number of people were necessary: as the 
" Passion," the " Last Judgment," etc., and these tableaux 
were called Mysteres. Later dialogues were introduced, and 
these dramatic mysteries created such an extraordinary vogue 
that associations were formed in all the large cities to rep- 
resent them. 

Besides the mysteries which originated with the liturgical 
texts and represented especially the events of the Gospel, the 
Passion, the Resurrection and the Incarnation, there pro- 
ceeded another form of the theater from the canticles in 
honor of the saints, or from the readings of their lives given 
in the churches. This form was called Miracle. Since very 
early times it had been customary for students to represent 
scenes from the lives of their patron saints. In 1119, the 
Miracle of St. Catherine was given by the novices of the 
convent of Saint- Albans under the direction of the abbot. 
Sometimes the whole life of a saint was represented, and the 
relics of the saint placed on the scene during the representa- 
tion. 

About 1200, or perhaps earlier, Jean Bodel, of Arras, com- 
posed the Miracle or Jen de St. Nicholas. The prologue to 
this play analyzes it and discloses the climax. For the poets 
of that time — like the Greeks * — did not by any means, seek 
to surprise; nor did they believe, with d'Aubignac, that ret- 
icence in unraveling the plot was " the soul of tragedy." 
The trouveres announced in advance the story to be told in 
their epic poems and the dramatic authors did likewise. Ret- 
icence in the development of the plot is an entirely modern 
device. The Jeu de St. Nicholas of Bodel, and the Miracle 
de Theophile, by Rutebeuf, are the only specimens of Miracle 
plays preserved from the thirteenth century in France. The 
Miracle of Theophile, by Rutebeuf, consisting of only six hun- 
dred and sixty-six verses, is a very curious legend in dialogue. 

1 The ancient choruses in the Greek tragedies took the place of the 
monologues. 

64 



THE THEATER IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

Theophile is the Faust of the Middle Ages — resembling not 
Goethe's Faust, but Marlowe's. We have here a priest who has 
sold his soul to the devil in order to recover an office or benefice 
he has lost. He is saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary. 
One may consider this play of the thirteenth century, chrono- 
logically, as the first of the Miracle plays of Notre Dame, in 
the fourteenth century. 

The Miracle play had for its foundation a miracle; that 
is to say, the climax rested upon the intervention of a su- 
perhuman power. Most frequently, it seems, such a miracu- 
lous intervention proceeded from the Virgin Mary; this is 
because (as we see from the nondramatic writings, from the 
legends of the time, and from the monuments) the last cen- 
turies of the Middle Ages were very particularly devoted to 
the Mother of Jesus. These Miracle plays center upon a 
struggle between the demons (who have a visible role as char- 
acters in the drama) and the Virgin Mary, for the soul of 
the sinner. Gautier de Coincy, a French poet of the twelfth 
century, collected a large number of pious legends which had 
accumulated during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and 
translated them from Latin into French. They comprise 
about thirty thousand verses and are called the Miracles 
Nostre Dame. He sets forth that the sinner who has never 
ceased to invoke the Virgin will be saved no matter how black 
his crime. One finds in these plays characteristics of the art- 
lessness and the moral conception of the time. In the story 
of Robert the Devil, 1 Robert is the spiritual son of Satan. 
He was conceived by a woman who prayed for a son, first to 
God, the Virgin, and the Saints, and finally invoked the Devil. 
Robert is thus the child of despair. He is steeped in crime, 
but eventually is filled with the divine grace, and expiates 
his sins, by acts of courage, charity, and humility, and dies 
like a saint. Robert the Devil was supposed to convey the 
ideas of original sin and divine compassion. Another Miracle 
tells of a monk so ignorant that he could retain in mind 
nothing more than Ave Maria, and was therefore scorned 
by all. His sanctity was revealed at his death, when five 
i 

1 It contains forty-seven characters and two thousand verses. It was 
nsed for the theme in Meyerbeer's opera. 
6 65 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

roses sprang from his lips in honor of the five letters in 
the name of Maria. A nun having left her convent to live 
a life of pleasure, returned after many years to find that the 
Virgin Mary, to whom she had never ceased praying, had 
taken her place and fulfilled her duties as nun. 

Another collection of Miracles de Notre Dame was com- 
posed in the thirteenth century, by Jean le Marchant, a priest 
of Chartres. Among them is the story of the chevalier who. 
in order to obtain riches promised to give his wife to the 
devil. While he was conducting her to his satanic majesty, 
the poor wife entered the chapel of Mary for a moment's 
prayer. In the meantime the Virgin Mary returned in the 
wife's place to the husband, and was given by him to the 
devil, whom she punished severely. 

The story of the Tombeor Nostre Dame, 1 telLs of a poor 
juggler who became a monk and saw his companions pay 
reverence to the Virgin according to each one's ability in 
music, art, or poetry. Knowing nothing but his tricks, he 
secretly slipped into the chapel during the night, equipped 
with his old juggler outfit and rendered homage to the Virgin 
by dancing and juggling before her statue. Some of the 
monks hidden in the chapel, horrified at this sacrilegious 
proceeding, were about to denounce him when the Virgin 
herself approached the juggler to wipe the perspiration from 
his brow. 

The Miracles from a dramatic standpoint are considered 
superior to the Mysteries, owing to their simplicity in con- 
struction and the possibility of development, whereas the 
Mysteries were prolific productions of enormous length, which 
retraced the entire history of religion, from the creation of 
the world to the resurrection. The Passion, a Mystery by 
Arnold Greban, contained thirty-five thousand verses, and the 
Mystery Actes des Apotres, by Arnold and Simon Greban, 
comprised sixty thousand verses and the performance lasted 
forty days. Several hundred persons were required for these 
performances and they sometimes played the most terrible 

1 This legend is the source of Anatole France's story of the Jongleur 
de Notre Dame and of Maurice Lena's poem which Jules Massenet has 
set to music in an opera of the same name. 

66 



THE THEATER IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

scenes very realistically. He who represented Jesus was 
properly crucified, and escaped death with difficulty; the 
unfortunate one who enacted Judas was cut loose only at the 
last extremity, and when the public judged by his contortions 
that his remorse was sincere. 

The members of the confreries especially devoted to these 
representations were considered in a measure professionals, 
and they had a fixed theater in some inclosed space ; but gen- 
erally the theater used was temporarily built and disappeared 
after the performance ; the actors were the people who volun- 
teered to take part, the roles of Jesus, or God, or the saints 
being represented by priests. A glittering procession of horse- 
men rode through towns and villages, several months before, 
announcing with trumpet call and poetry (cri du mystere) the 
play, its date and duration, summoning those who wished to 
take part, and distributing their roles among them. Thou- 
sands of people witnessed these performances. During the 
period of representation (from three to forty days) the gates 
of the town were closed and sentinels patroled the streets to 
guard the deserted houses. The cost of the theater, together 
with the production, sometimes rose to one hundred thousand 
francs ($20,000). The interior of the theater was richly 
decorated with draperies and had an enormous stage * divided 
into three parts (not of three stories as is still erroneously 
believed). The division in the center represented the earth 
sometimes with forty mansions : the palace of Herod, the tem- 
ple of Jerusalem, the house of Mary of Nazareth, or the 
abode of Adam and Eve, etc. Mountains, forests, rivers, and 
lakes were introduced. To the left was Paradise, with flowers 
and trees where God, usually in pontifical robes, was rep- 
resented with His angels watching the play to the accompani- 
ment of music. To the right was the entrance of Hell in the 
shape of a dragon's mouth, opening and closing to engulf 
sinners and emitting fire and smoke. At first only men were 
allowed on the stage, as in Rome and Athens, but later women 
assumed the female role, a custom introduced by the wander- 
ing players from Italy. The scenery was the same throughout 

1 An excellent picture of the whole effect of the stage in the Middle Ages 
can be seen in a manuscript of the Mystery of the Passion in Valenciennes. 

67 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

the play, and all the actors remained on the stage from begin- 
ning to end, even if they had nothing more to do. 

Of the numerous dramatic societies which flourished not 
only in Paris, but in all parts of France during the Middle 
Ages, the most celebrated was the Confrerie de la Passion 
composed of the bourgeois and artisans of Paris, who, under 
the direction of the clergy devoted themselves to the repre- 
sentation of the mysteres de la Passion. In 1402, this or- 
ganization received from the king the theater monopoly of 
Paris, which they enjoyed for more than a century. Their 
performances were first given in a hall of the Hopital de la 
Trinite, a hostelry near the Porte Saint-Denis for pilgrims 
and travelers who arrived in Paris after the gates were 
closed. Then the company played in the Hotel de Flandres, 
and finally they obtained the Hotel de Bourgogne (former 
palace of the Dukes of Burgundy). In 1548, Parliament in- 
terdicted the representations of ■ ' mysteries ' ' ; this practically 
ended the most powerful dramatic corporation of Paris, and 
gave the deathblow to the religious theater of the Middle 
Ages. The confreres still had the theater privilege, but 
after unsuccessful attempts with secular plays they ceased 
their performances and rented their theater to a company 
of actors called Comediens francais ordinaires du Roi, and 
henceforth known as the troupe royale de I'hotel de Bour- 
gogne. 1 A decree issued by Louis XIV in 1676, declared 
the Confrerie de la Passion dissolved and conferred their 
property on the city hospital. The comedians paid the ground 
rent to the hospital as they had done to the confrerie. This 
is the origin of the droit des pauvres, a tax to which the 
French theaters, concerts, and analogous amusements are still 
subjected. 

In imitation of the mysteries, great events of national or 
ancient history were dramatized, such as the Siege of Orleans, 
and the Destruction of Troy, immense works, but of small 
literary value. 

The comic theater existed in Paris in the Middle Ages in 
the form of soties, moralites and farces. The growing desire 

1 This company was united by order of Louis XIV with Moliere's com- 
pany to form the famous Com£die-Fran<?aise, or Th6atre-Francais. 

68 



THE THEATER IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

of the people to witness these performances gave rise to 
innumerable dramatic societies in all parts of France: the 
Puys, the Basoche, the Enfants sans-souci, Fous or Sots, the 
Comards, etc. The Puys, organized in honor of the Virgin, 
gave representations of the miracles of her life. Originally 
they were intended to crown religious plays, but gradually 
degenerated into awarding prizes to silly songs and licentious 
pieces. 

The Basoche was a corporation of clerks from the Palais 
de Justice 1 (basoche), the members of which elected a king 
and his court from among their numbers. The Basoche 
presided at public entertainments and also gave theatrical 
performances — farces, soties and moralites — on the marble 
table 2 of the palace. 

The Enfants sans-souci (Children without care), or Fous, 
or Sots (fools), received letters patent from Charles VI, to 
form a dramatic organization. They had a chief called 
Prince of Sots, a second chief called Mother Sotte, and other 
dignitaries with equally bizarre titles. The plays they per- 
formed were called soties. The sotie, in one respect, re- 
sembled the Italian comedy, inasmuch as the characters were 
stereotyped personages, and always the same. It put on the 
stage live issues of the time. It was the journalism of the 
epoch. All the quarrels between royalty and the Holy See, all 
the dissensions between the people and the great, or the gov- 
ernment — in one word, all the affairs of the time were made 
into soties — satires in dialogue. Petit de Julleville discredits 
the theory of the Parfaict brothers, who represented the 
Enfants sans-souci, as young people of good families playing 
comedy to amuse and to moralize the people. He asserts that 
their origin is obscure, but that they were composed of the 
boheme and not of the jeunesse doree of Paris. The confrerie 
owned a playhouse called the Maison des sotz attendans. Cle- 

1 When the Kings of France occupied the Palais de Justice it was often 
called the Palais Royal. 

2 Jurisdiction, called the Table de Marbre, because its sessions were 
held on a large marble table occupying the entire space of the large hall 
in the Palais de Justice in Paris. This table also served the Basochiens 
(clerks of the basoche) to give their performances. Henri III suppressed 
the title of the king of the basoche. 

69 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ment Marot, who in his youth was one of its members, wrote a 
poem for his companions called Ballade des Enfants sans-souci. 

The sotie differed from the farce only in the costume of 
the personages: the sots wore parti-colored dresses (green 
and yellow), and caps with long ears, and their names were 
always preceded by the epithet of sot. The society is sup- 
posed to have been founded on the idea that this world is a 
kingdom of folly. Sometimes the soties expressed very dar- 
ing political satire. The people against whom it was directed 
were impersonated, dressed as sots and given over to ridicule. 
The sotie " Vieux Monde, Abus, les sots " bitterly censured 
the courts of justice, universities, and the Church, sometimes 
even royalty did not escape satire. Louis XI and Francis I 
placed a limit to these audacious liberties, but Louis XII often 
made them serve his political attacks. When this monarch 
was about to declare war with the pope, Julius II, he feared 
an insurrection among the people. Realizing the power of 
the theater on the public, he charged Pierre Gringoire to 
defend his politics in a play called Jen du Prince des sots, a 
dramatic trilogy composed of a sotie, a moralite, and a farce. 
This was represented in the market place before the king, the 
University, and the people in 1511, and held to ridicule the 
pope. It is one of the most curious monuments of the litera- 
ture of the Middle Ages. At the end of the sixteenth century, 
Henry IV completely banished all political allusions from 
the stage. 

The moralite was a dramatic work, whose object was a 
moral and the characters of which were pure abstractions. 
The oldest moralites date from the fifteenth century, and re- 
late to religion. Religious, didactic, satirical, polemical, 
legendary, or historical are the various characteristics de- 
veloped in some of the moralites, while others simply point 
a moral. Such were the moralites of Le Mauvais Biche et le 
Ladre (the Bad, Rich Man and the Stingy Man), of the Em- 
peror who condemned to death his Nephew, of Griselidis, 1 of 

1 Griselidis, or Griselda, the heroine of a legend used in the literature of 
all nations: in the Lai du Frene of Marie de France, in the Tales of 
Canterbury by Chaucer, in Boccaccio's Decameron; by Petrarcha in Latin, 
by Erhart Gross and H. Stemhowel in German, in one of Perrault's Conies 
de ma mere VOye, and recently by Armand Silvestre and Eugene Morand. 

70 



THE THEATER IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

the " Mother and Daughter " drawn from an ancient author, 
Valerius Maximus, and which is the story of a mother con- 
demned to die of hunger but nourished in prison with her 
daughter's milk and finally pardoned in consideration of 
this pious fraud. One of the most curious moralites is the 
Condamnation de Banquet by Dr. Nicolas de la Ches- 
naye. The characters are: Je bois a vous (I drink to you), 
Gourmandise (gluttony), Friandise (daintiness), Bonne 
Compagnie (good company), jolly companions who dine sump- 
tuously and with great merriment in spite of the hideous 
forms of Colicque (colic), Goutte (gout), Apoplexie (apo- 
plexy), etc., which menace them. From Dinner these lively 
companions hasten to Supper still followed by the ugly spec- 
ters who succeed in upsetting chairs, tables, and even some of 
the companions. Undaunted they then go to Banquet where, 
however, the specters joined by la Mort (death) succeed in 
killing some of the companions. The surviving ones insti- 
tute proceedings against Dinner, Supper, and Banquet in the 
court presided over by Experience. The doctors Hippoc- 
rates, 1 Averroes 2 and others called in to give their verdict, 
condemn Banquet to be hanged by Diete (diet) and Supper 
is ordered to keep himself six miles — that is, six hours — from 
Dinner. 

The Danse Macabre or Dance of Death was originally a 
kind of moralite intended to remind the living of the power 
of death. The performances took place at the Convent of 
the Innocents during the fourteenth century in Paris in 
commemoration, it is thought, of the seven Maccabees. 3 It 
consisted of dialogues between Death and twenty-four people 
of various ranks from the pope, emperor, empress, king, and 
queen to the peasant and the beggar. Hence the Latin name 
Chorea Maccabceorum later changed to Danse Macabre. As 
early as the beginning of the fifteenth century this idea, also 
adopted by other countries, was introduced into painting,* 

1 The greatest doctor of ancient times (450 B.C.), 

2 A famous Arabian physician (twelfth century). 
* 2 Maccabees. 

* In the Marienkirche at Luebeck, the Campo Santa at Pisa, the Cathedral 
of Strassburg; in the cemeteries of Dresden, Berne, and Bale, which latter 
has forty-five pictures. 

71 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

sculpture, 1 and finally into engraving 2 and printing, 3 the 
different personages being represented as whirled around in 
a fantastic dance with Death as the leader. It was in vogue 
in England, but reached an extraordinary popularity in Ger- 
many in the middle of the fifteenth century, which was soon 
after repeated in France where it was treated in every possi- 
ble way — in pictures, bas-reliefs, tapestry, etc. Death was 
made grotesque — a sort of " horrid harlequin," a skeleton 
dancer, or a musician playing for dancers, leading all man- 
kind. 

The farce was at first an accessory to serious representa- 
tions serving sometimes as an interlude to a Mystery or as an 
episode in the play itself. There are more than one hundred 
farces preserved from the Middle Ages in France. Their 
authors loved especially to picture conjugal life, and to make 
fun of the quarrels of the household, either among the burgh- 
ers or the common people. In the farce, indicated by the 
title of De celui qui enferma sa femme dans une tour, ou 
la Dame qui ay ant tort, parut avoir raison (of him who locked 
up his wife in a tower, or the lady who, being wrong, appeared 
to be right), we see the George Dandin of Moliere. We have 
also the farce of the women who want to rule their husbands ; 
the farce of the newly wed, the origin of a chapter in Rabelais, 
and a scene in Moliere 's ' ' Forced Marriage. ' ' The admirable 
Farce du Cuvier (wash tub) is classical: An almost angelic hus- 
band, Jean, lives with his wife and mother-in-law, who contrive 
to torture the poor man morning and evening. He is their 
slave, their scapegoat. They make him get up before daybreak, 
to light the fire, make up the rooms, wash the child. Then the 
women appear and find fault with everything. At last, one 
day, in desperation, he implores them to make a list of all his 
tasks, and to forget nothing — for'he has decided to do nothing 
that is not set down in writing. So the women prepare the 
list, and he puts it into his pocket. Pretty soon the bitter 

1 la the church at Cherbourg. 

1 Hans Holbein (fifteenth century) left fifty-three sketches for engrav- 
ings. Other engravings date from the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, 
and even nineteenth centuries. (W. Kaulback and others.) 

3 First known printed edition dates from 1485. Another edition is that 
of Danse des Morts of Bale. 

72 



THE THEATER IN THE MIDDLE AGES 

and violent wife begins to chide him. Gesticulating, she does 
not think of a washtub behind her, in which the wash is 
soaking, and she falls into it. ' ' Help, help ! Jean, good 
husband, dear husband," she cries. But Jean gravely draws 
the paper from his pocket, and reads it attentively. " This 
is not written on my list," he says contentedly; and he 
crosses his arms. His wife's cries bring her mother. She 
attempts to lift her daughter from the tub, but she is not 
strong enough. * ' Jean, my dear son-in-law, help me! " she 
implores. " This is not on my list," repeats Jean. At last, 
when his wife is more than half -drowned, he consents to draw 
her out, but only on condition that henceforth he will be mas- 
ter in his house. They promise, but everyone says to him- 
self, " The poor fool will always be led." 

In some farces the judiciary world, the pedants, braggarts, 
and hypocrites are ridiculed. Among the best examples of 
this genre and replete with satirical humor and wit are the 
Plaidoyer de la Simple et de la Busee (Plea of the Simple and 
the Crafty Woman) and the Droits nouveaux (New Rights) 
by William Coquillart. 

The anonymous 1 and inimitable Farce de Maitre Pathelin 
(Lawyer Pathelin) of the fifteenth century is more elaborate 
than all the other farces of the old theater. Rejuvenated in 
1705 by Abbe Brueys, it still holds the stage of the Theatre- 
Francais. Pathelin, a briefless lawyer, swears that he will 
procure for himself and his wife that very day new garments 
of which they are greatly in need. He enters the shop of his 
neighbor, the draper, Master Guillaume Joceaulme; cajoles 
him, speaks of his late father, his aunt, praises the quality of 
his wares, and allows himself to be induced by Guillaume to 
buy six yards of superb cloth for nine ecus. 2 He takes the 
cloth with him, and invites the merchant to come to his house 
in the evening, to eat goose and receive his money. Guill- 
aume goes; but what a surprise! He finds the lawyer's wife 
in tears, and the lawyer himself in bed. The wife insists 
that her husband has not stirred from the house that day nor 
any day for the past eleven weeks! The draper is very in- 

1 Attributed without foundation to Antoine de La Salle, to Pierre 
Blanchet, and even to Villon. 

2 In ancient times an 6cu was worth about three francs (sixty cents). 

73 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

dignant upon hearing this, but Pathelin, in seeming delirium, 
utters cries in all sorts of dialects talking Picard, Flemish, 
Provencal, and even Turkish in such a manner that the draper, 
deafened and frightened, runs away, making the sign of the 
cross, and thinking that perhaps the devil himself had played 
him the trick: 

Le diable, en lieu de ly, 

A prins mon drap pour moy tenter. 

Benedicite. 1 

On his return home, Guillaume meets his shepherd, Aignelet, 
who has for years killed and eaten Guillaume 's best sheep and 
pretended that sickness has carried them off. Guillaume 
finally in possession of proofs of the shepherd's perfidy, in- 
forms him that he will be summoned before the court. Aig- 
nelet in great distress intrusts his case to Pathelin, who ad- 
vises him to feign idiocy and to reply to everything with a 
bleating ba-a ! Guillaume, recognizing in his shepherd 's law- 
yer the thief of his cloth is so disconcerted that he loses his 
head and confuses the story of the clothier with that of the 
sheep. He so tries the patience of the judge who in vain 
calls him back to the subject in question with the famous 
phrase revenons a nos moutons (let us return to our sheep) 
that he absolves Aignelet. Pathelin attempts to collect his 
fee^ but the shrewd Aignelet has profited by the cleverness of 
his lawyer and defeats him with his eternal Ba-a. Pathelin, 
caught in his own trap, returns to his lodgings confessing 
that he has found his master. 

These forms of comedy show most curious and original 
qualities, in them the old esprit gaulois is given a free course. 
They did not, however furnish the inspiration and materials 
of true French comedy, for in the intermediate Renaissance 
period they were completely lost in the shadow of the newly 
introduced dramas of antiquity. 

1 The devil, instead of him, 
Has taken my cloth to tempt me. 
Praise ye (O Lord). 



CHAPTER VI 

LYRIC POETRY 

In the Middle Ages narrative poetry took the form of the 
national epic, in which it reached its highest expression; but 
during a thousand years of literary productiveness, various 
attempts to create a body of lyric poetry were not fairly 
realized until the nineteenth century. The French genius 
does not lean to lyricism. G. Lanson notes that his country- 
men are unlike the Germans with their deep, pessimistic 
nature, conscious of the tragedy of life. The French, he 
remarks, are led neither by personal experience nor by deep 
reflection to recognize the fact that the perpetuity of suffer- 
ing is the very essence of life. On the contrary, life is to 
them a delight; and hence, unlike Heine, they have not been 
" able to create elegies out of their great sufferings. ' ' It has 
been their habit to regard only the actual world and life in 
its immediate aspect, and to free themselves from everything 
that would arrest action. They have long intrusted to the 
Church the business of regulating for them the questions of 
a future existence — of death and eternity ; to spare themselves 
further thought except during the brief moments of the death- 
bed. Metaphysical problems and religious pensiveness were 
stored away in a corner of the heart where they would not 
disturb them in the enjoyment of life. Thus a great lyric 
poetry, the most unrestrained and elevated of all poetical 
inspirations, the outcry of the earnestness and the sadness of 
existence, could not arise in France from those elements and 
circumstances which created it among other nations. The 
origin of lyric poetry in Northern France, so far as it 
meagerly existed at all, related to woman — to whom action 
was denied, and who lived somewhat in the realm of dreams 
and emotions conducive to poetry. For her, and perhaps by 
her, dancing songs and spindle songs were composed at the 

75 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

period of truly spontaneous and popular poetic creation. 
The songs with which the young women and girls in French 
hamlets accompanied their spinning wheels — one singing the 
theme solo, the others taking up the refrain — have been utter- 
ly lost. But with the aid of certain refrains (motets or 
ballettes) of an ancient and popular character, belonging to 
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, together with the 
cognate poetry in Sicily, Portugal and Germany, it has been 
possible to reconstruct these songs, though somewhat feebly. 

Talis tot se leva: 

"Bonjour ait qui mon coeur a." 

Beau se vetit et para, 

Dessous Taulnoie. 

"Bonjour ait qui mon coeur a 

N'est avec moi." 1 

All these songs speak of love. There is the maiden, re- 
joicing in her youth and beauty, who boasts of having a lover, 
or complains that she has none — who would marry him whom 
her parents refuse, or who rejects the choice of her parents, 
and tells of their cruelty. Secret meetings, departure, absence, 
desertion, dangers, surprises, fears, ruses, form the substance 
of the emotions and the songs. But the song did not become 
an ode. .The dancing couplet did not rise to the dignity of 
the lyric poem; it was not enlarged by a feeling for nature, 
by a sympathetic communion with universal life, by a pro- 
found and trembling intuition of the eternal conditions of 
human suffering, or by intensity of emotion and the absorp- 
tion of the whole being in one great passion. There is a 
lively, pleasing, dancing rhythm, to be sure — wonderfully 
adapted to the superficial form of those sentiments which touch 
the heart without filling it ; but nothing of soul-stirring passion 
or of ardent self-forgetfulness. There are poetic dialogues 
between two lovers, or between mother and daughter, wife 
and husband. There are short stories, in couplets — romances 
of " fair Eglantine before her mother, sewing a shirt," of 
" fair Amelot spinning alone in her chamber." Or, fair 

1 Talis arose early: " Good-day to him who has my heart." 
Beautifully she arrayed herself, and adorned herself under the alders. 
"Good-day to him who has my heart; he is not with me." 

76 



LYRIC POETRY 

Erembour sees, passing by her window, Count Renaud, who 
has deserted her; she calls to him, and clears herself of the 
suspicion of infidelity which kept him away. Such are the 
spinning songs of the rude, early French period — poor, but 
spontaneous, and not to be confounded with the mediocre 
imitations by Audefroi le Batard, in the thirteenth century. 

The dancing songs consisted essentially of couplets and 
refrains — rondets, ballettes, virelis, from which originated 
the rondeaux, ballades, virelais of the fourteenth century, 
with fixed forms. The parting of the lovers, warned of the 
dawn by the lark, and, later, by the watcher, constitutes the 
genre called aubade * (from aube, dawn). The two most im- 
portant kinds of the old French lyrics are the " Romances/ ' 
also called Chansons de toile, from songs sung when weav- 
ing linen (toile), the subject of which is usually a young girl 
of noble birth and some knight. The other genre is the 
Pastourelle (feminine form of pastoureau, shepherd), the 
rhythms of which were particularly lively and graceful and 
whose contents depicted the meeting of a knight and a 
shepherdess who sometimes accepted, sometimes refused him. 
These two genres were perhaps imported from the South ; yet, 
treating, as they do, of universally human subjects, they may 
have grown spontaneously. 

We find, also, some early songs filled with a human sen- 
timent far removed from the theme of love. A crusader's 
song, composed before 1147, is more oratorical than lyrical, 
colored more with reason than with passion, and significant 
in its use of a didatic moral : 

Comtes ni dues ni les rois couronnes 
Ne se pourront a la mort derober : 
Car, quand ils ont grands tresors amasses; 
Plus il leur faut partir a grand regret. 
Mieux leur valut les employer a bien : 
Car quand ils sont en terre ensevelis, 
Ne leur sert plus ni chateau ni cite. 2 

1 The morning counterpart of the serenade. 

2 Nor counts nor dukes nor crowned kings can cheat death; for when 
they have amassed great treasures, the more they must be loath to go. 
Better for them to have used these treasures for good; for when they are 
buried in the ground, neither castle nor stronghold is of use to them. 

77 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

With this production we see general ideas entering into 
French literature: the road is opened which leads to Mal- 
herbe. But up to this time French lyricism had little value ; 
no one thought even of collecting its examples. Then, about 
1150, the rich Provencal influence began to interrupt the 
current of original French lyrics by introducing an artificial 
and learned poetry in France, yet, at the same time, raising 
the respect for lyric verses, and thus preserving for us some 
remnants of the popular productions of former centuries. 
The creation of Provencal poetry is due, to a considerable 
extent, to woman ; from her it received its subject and inspira- 
tion. For, in Provence, social conditions gave woman a 
dominion, and made her taste a law. The baron of the North, 
inclosed within the thick walls of his fortress, dreamt only 
of war. But the nobles of the South — at peace under two or 
three great counts ; rich, living in cities, enamored of festivals 
and tournaments, with a spirit already open to culture and 
ideals, their ears trained to rhythm — created for themselves 
a literature in harmony with the physical and social condi- 
tions of their lives. In their leisure, love became the fore- 
most affair; and in order to please woman, they acquired 
polish, humanity and freed themselves from feudal igno- 
rance and brutality. There was less need of epics than of a 
lyric poetry. 

Demogeot, in his History of French Literature, tells us 
that the epic songs of the language of the North have un- 
rolled before us the ideal picture of feudalism — a vast scene 
of history in which the life of the Middle Ages is disclosed 
in its entirety. But there is another class of poems which 
reveals them to us from a different point of view. These are 
the small genre pictures — portraits which portray so well the 
costume and the physiognomy of the epoch, that they form 
the indispensable complement of the large canvases, and 
lend them truth and life. First, and especially in the South, 
lyric inspiration awakens. Happy flower of the climate, 
it was born there, as it were, without cultivation; under a 
more gracious sky, under less barbarous governments, men 
allowed themselves to embrace earlier the sweet seductions 
of life. In that land all women were loved, all knights were 
poets. The noblest lords, the proudest Burgraves of Pro- 

78 



LYRIC POETRY 

venee and of Languedoc, the Counts of Toulouse, the Dukes 
of Aquitaine, the Dauphins of Vienne and of Auvergne, the 
Princes of Orange, the Counts of Foix — all these composed 
and sang verses. Often, even a page at court, sometimes 
even the son of a serf, was honored, through his talent, only 
less than his noble master, provided he possessed intelligence 
and an elegant deportment. 

After Provence had detached herself from Northern 
France and formed an independent State 1 under Boson I and 
his successors, she became happy and tranquil under her ob- 
scure and paternal sovereigns, and saw her population and 
her wealth growing; the customs became refined, the lan- 
guage polished, and a harmonious instrument in the hands 
of its first poets. The fusion of one part of Provence with 
Catalonia, 2 under the rule of Raymond-Beranger, in 1092, 
imparted a new movement to the southern spirit. Boson, 
governor of Provence under Charles the Bald, freed himself 
after the king's death, in 897, from French sovereignty, and 
founded the kingdom of Aries (Cisjurane Burgundy). The 
city of Aries was called " Gallic Rome " from its importance. 
The two peoples spoke almost the same language. The spirit 
of the one, the wealth of the other, produced an elegance of 
customs still unknown to the other regions. The influence 
of Spain since the eleventh century had its effect on this 
blossoming literature, developing a strong lyrical tendency 
which lasted until the thirteenth century. The splendor of 
the courts of Barcelona, Granada and Cordova, the mag- 
nificence of Moorish architecture, made known by the large 
number of French, Provencal, and Gascon knights who had 
joined King Alphonse IV of Castile and the Cid 3 Rodriguez 
de Bivar, were sources of inspiration. 

Through the knights of Arabia, who visited the courts 

1 Ancient Hispania, Tarraconensis, overrun by the Alani, Goths, and, 
later, by the Saracens. 

2 United to Aragon in 1137, but in revolt against the Spanish sol- 
diery, Catalonia gave herself to France and became the patrimony of 
Raymond. 

8 The principal national hero of Spain, famous for his exploits against 
the Moors; but, of course, the Cid of the Chronicle is not at all the Cid of 
the Romances. 

79 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

of Christian princes, 1 Oriental poetry became gradually infil- 
trated into the languages of the South, and with the aid of 
music, instilled into them not only its inspirations, but 
its harmony and its rhythmic form. With the exception of 
a small number of epic works 2 which Fauriel ( French liter- 
ary historian, 1772-1844), and Raynouard (1761-1836) have 
made known to us, the only monuments of the southern muse 
are certain impulsive effusions of sentiment or spirit. They 
resemble not so much literary compositions as the melodious 
music of that life of love and pleasure which passed joyfully 
from the tournaments of the castles to the eternal feasts of 
a smiling climate. To produce such works it was not neces- 
sary to be a great cleric and to know how to read; it was 
enough to have a heart capable of love. One of the chief 
merits of those charming songs is entirely lost for him who 
cannot read them easily in their original language. The 
Provencal rhythm is inflected by the troubadours with a co- 
quetry full of grace — " like a ribbon with striking colors 
which floats and vanishes in a knot artistically formed." " I 
confess," says Raynouard, " that I have tried in vain to 
offer a translation of them; the sentiment, the grace, cannot 
be translated. These are delicate flowers, the fragrance of 
which must be breathed on the plant." " To enjoy those 
songs," says Schlegel, " which have charmed so many illus- 
trious sovereigns, so many brave knights, so many ladies 
famous for their beauty, one must hear those troubadours 
themselves, and try to understand their language. If you 
do not want to take that trouble, well, then, you are con- 
demned to read the translations of Abbe Millet " (French 
scholar of the eighteenth century). The number of known 
troubadours is more than five hundred, among whom the 
most famous are : Bertrand de Born and Bernard de Venta- 
dour of the Limousin group, Arnaud de Marveil, Richard 
Cceur de Lion, King Alphonse of Aragon, William IX of 
Poitou, the oldest known troubadour, Prince Geoffroy Rudel 
de Blaya, and Clara d'Anduze. The theme for their songs 
was principally love and the troubadours disguised the iden- 

1 See description in the Dernier Abencerage of Chateaubriand. 

2 See Gerard de Roussillon; Jaufre e Brunesentz; Chronique des Albigeois; 
Roman de Flamenca; Roman de Fierabras. 

80 



LYRIC POETRY 

tity of the ladies by substituting names of fantasy, such as: 
Gent conquis (Fair captive), Sobre totz (Above all), Bel vezer 
(Beautiful countenance), and even Mon diable (My devil). 

Arnaut de Marveil or Maroill, a poor serf who became a 
skillful troubadour, attached to the court of Viscount de 
Beziers, had fallen in love with Countess Adelaide, daughter 
of Raymond V, Count of Toulouse. Singing, under a ficti- 
tious name, of the lady he loved, he traces thus ingenuously 
her picture : Pug blanca es que EIena> 

Belhazors que flors que nays, 
E de cortezia plenia, 

Blanca dens ab motz verays, 
Ab cor franc ses vilanatge, 

Color fresca ab sauras cri: 
Dieus que'l det lo senhoratage 

La sal qu'anc gensor no vi. 1 

He finally disclosed himself as the author of the songs; 
but no sooner had the countess encouraged him, than she was 
forced to dismiss the poet at the behest of her royal suitor, 
King Alphonse of Castile. So Arnaut went forth in despair, 
and sought refuge with his friend and seignior, William of 
Montpellier. The fountains of his grief were opened, and he 

san £ : " Sweet my musings used to be, 2 

Without shadow of distress, 
Till the queen of loveliness, 
Lowly, mild, yet frank as day, 
Bade me put her love away, 

Love so deeply wrought in me. 
And because I answered not, 
Nay, nor e'en her mercy sought, 
All the joy of life is gone> 
For it lived in her alone." 

1 Fairer than the far-famed Helen, 
Lovelier than the flow'rets gay, 
Snow-white teeth, and lips truth-telling, 

Heart as open as the day; 
Golden hair, and fresh bright roses — 

God, who formed a thing so fair, 
Knows that never yet another 
Lived, who can with her compare. 
3 Mot eran dous miei cossir. Harriet W. Preston's translation. 
7 81 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Another famous troubadour was Bertran de Born, 1 whose 
adventurous life and turbulent humor, Villemain has set 
forth in an interesting fashion. This great lord, Viscount 
of Hautefort, belonging to the twelfth century, whom Uh- 
land and Heine have immortalized in their beautiful poems, 
was called Tyrtaeus because he inspired with his fiery songs 
the warriors of France against the English invaders. But he 
was of a disposition warlike, violent, passionate, and unscrupu- 
lous, and, says Faguet, deserved in spite of his final penitence 
in the Convent of Citeaux, to be placed by Dante in his 
" Hell." In his verses he sometimes affords a strange relief 
to the love songs of his contemporaries by a fortunate admix- 
ture of warlike sentiment and pictures borrowed from feudal 
life. Thus does he appeal to his lady-love 2 from the slanders 
of his enemies : 

(Jeu m'escondic que mal non mier 

De so qu'ens an de mi dig lauzengier, etc.) 

I cannot hide from thee how much I fear 
The whispers breathed by flatterers in thine ear 
Against my faith. But turn not, oh, I pray, 
That heart so true, so faithful, so sincere, 
So humble and so frank, to me so dear, 
O, lady turn it not from me away! 

So may I lose my hawk, ere he can spring; 

Borne from my hand by some bold falcon's wing; 

Mangled and torn before my very eye, 

If every word thou utterest does not bring 

More joy to me than Fortune's favoring, 

Or all the bliss another's love might buy. 

1 An indefatigable fighter, who incited the two sons of Henry II of 
England to revolt against their father. He lost his castle twice. Dante, 
in his Inferno^ describes him carrying his own bloody head, which still 
seems to menace and to curse. 

2 Maenz de Montagnac, daughter of the Viscount de Turenne and wife of 
Taleyrand de Perigord. The song herewith reproduced places before us, 
says Sismondi, the real knight of olden times, busied with war and the 
chase, successively appealing to everything that is dear to him in life, to 
everything which has been the study of his youth and his riper age, and 
yet esteeming them all light, in comparison with love. 

82 



LYRIC POETRY 

So, with my shield on neck, 'mid storm and raid, 

With vizor blinding me, and shorten 'd rein, 

And stirrups far too long, so may I ride, 

So may my trotting charger give me pain ; 

So may the ostler treat me with disdain, 

As they who tell those tales have grossly lied. 

When I approach the gaming board to play, 

May I not turn a penny all the day, 

Or may the board be shut, the dice untrue, 

If the truth dwell not in me when I say 

No other fair e'er wiled my heart away 

From her I've long desired and loved — from you. 

Or, prisoner to some noble, may I fill, 

Together with three more, some dungeon chill, 

Unto each other odious company; 

Let masters, servants, porters, try their skill 

And use me for a target if they will, 

If ever I have loved aught else but thee. 

So may another knight make love to you, 

And so may I be puzzled what to do; 

So may I be becalmed 'mid oceans wide ; 

May the king's porter beat me black and blue; 

And may I fly ere I the battle view, 

As they that slander me have grossly lied. 

His poetry — like himself — is powerful, ardent, passionate; 
his sirventes are satires, challenges, duels. 

The troubadours often made use of little satirical poems 
which they hurled at their rivals, their lords, the kings, the 
clergy, and sometimes even at the ladies. These poems in 
which satire intermingled with warlike inspiration were 
called sirventes 1 which originally meant service songs, that 
is, songs used in the service of certain lords or of factions 
(associated principally with the Ghibellines) . The sirventes 
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries took the place of the 
newspaper or pamphlet against the Pope and were circulated 
from castle to castle in southern France. 

1 " Poemata in quibus servientium, seu militum facta et servilia refer- 
untur." — Du Cange, Siruentois. 

83 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The most piquant form in which the Provencals composed 
the love song was the so-called tenson, or dialogue poem of 
repartee (Jeu parti) between two troubadours — a kind of 
poetic tournament to which they challenged one another in 
the presence of ladies and knights. According to Jean Nos- 
tradamus, the tensons were disputations carried on between 
the poetical knights and ladies on some subtle question of 
love; and when they could not agree the disputants sent 
the tensons, for decision, to illustrious presiding ladies who 
held open " courts of love," a chivalrous institution existing 
from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. In these gal- 
lant courts the ladies presided and passed judgment in " de- 
crees of love " (arrests d'amour). In a code called Be Arte 
Amatoria et Eeprobationis amoris (1174) written by Andre 
the court chaplain, are cited the cours d'amour of Ermin- 
gard, Countess of Narbonne, of Queen Eleanor of Guyenne, 
of Marie of France, Countess of Champagne. In another 
list, supplied by Nostradamus, Laura de Noves, wife of Hugh 
de Sade, is mentioned among the principals in a court of 
Avignon. It was Laura, the " lady with the beautiful blond 
and wavy hair," who inspired Petrarcha. 1 Her beauty, her 
virtue, and her mind conquered all hearts. Petrarcha, who 
lived at Avignon, saw Laura and loved her — loved her for 
twenty years, even for ten years after her death. His poems 
of which she is the subject embrace three hundred and eight- 
een sonnets and eighty-eight songs. Laura did not wish to 

1 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarcha) (1304-1374), one of Italy's greatest 
poets, whose sonnets to Laura have won him enduring fame, was born at 
Arezzo (Italy), and came to Avignon at the age of five years. His family 
had fled their native land because of its unhappy strife. Petrarcha studied 
at Avignon, and later, to please his family, he studied law at Montpellier. 
The poet was much sought after because of his amiable and sweet dis- 
position. Rome, Naples, and the Court of France contended for his 
presence. He .betook himself to Rome, where he was crowned poet 
laureate at the Church of St. Peter; and he suspended his crown in the 
vault of the edifice, to render homage to God for his genius. Venice 
finally accorded justice to the family of the poet, returning to him his 
fortune and inviting him to live there, but he refused. He retired to 
Arco, where he died at the age of seventy years. Petrarcha wrote in 
French as well as in Italian, and it was France that nourished and stimu- 
lated his genius. 

84 



LYRIC POETRY 

marry the poet, lest he cease to sing. To dispel his cares, 
Petrarcha traveled; then he returned to Vauchise. Laura 
de Noves died of the plague, when she was thirty-eight years 
of age. Petrarcha, who was then at Naples, hastened to 
Vaucluse to weep over his beloved, whose body was interred 
in the monastery of the Dominicans. 

Anything like a comprehensive enumeration of the trou- 
badours would expand this chapter disproportionately; even 
Raynouard 's 1 Choix des Poesies originales des Troubadours 
(1816) embraces a list of some three hundred poets. Yet 
such is their relation to the society and the literature of the 
period, and with so much romantic interest are their personal- 
ities and productions invested, that some of them, at least, 
must be mentioned if only in the briefest fashion. 

William of Poitiers, 2 crusader, king, lover, was first of 
all, a man of action, yet he found time in the heat of his 
turbulent carer to compose poems in many keys, of a finish 
and quality that compel our admiration. His verses inspired 
by . " the tender passion," and supposed to reflect his own 
peculiar amatory adventures, are not at all meat for babes; 
but William sometimes voices his sentiments in the language 
of chivalry and idealism. Characteristic of this vein is his 
spring poem (Pus vezem de novelh florir, etc.) : 



1 English readers who cannot enjoy the originals, and for whom Ray- 
nouard is a closed book, will find no considerable body of good translations 
in any one volume. They must seek for them in the scattered pages of 
various essayists and historians. The translations reproduced in this 
chapter are taken, in part, from Henry Carrington's Anthology of French 
Poetry, from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries; Sismondi's Historical 
View of the Literature of the South of Europe, Roscoe's translation; Har- 
riet W. Preston's Troubadours and Trouveres, New and Old. 

2 William IX, Count of Poitiers and Duke of Aquitaine (born 1071 ; 
died 1127), reigned over Germany, the northern half of Aquitaine, Berry, 
Limousin, Auvergne. Refusing to join the first Crusade, in 1095, he could 
not, upon the capture of Jerusalem, four years later, resist the call for aid 
voiced by the little band of Red Cross Knights in the Holy Land. He 
signalized his departure by a poetic lament that expresses his poignant 
emotions on leaving his young son and his beloved land, to engage in an 
expedition so little to his taste, and naively exhibits the conflict between 
his natural impulses and a sense of duty. He survived this perilous cam- 
paign and lived twenty-five years longer. 

85 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Behold! the meads are green again, 
The orchard-bloom is seen again 
Of sky and stream the mien again 

Is mild, is bright; 
Now should each heart that loves obtain 

Its own delight. 

But I will say no ill of love, 
However slight my guerdon prove : 
Repining doth not me behoove; 

And yet — to know 
How lightly she, I fain would move, 

Might bliss bestow! 

There are who hold my folly great, 
Because with little hope I wait; 
But one old saw doth animate 

And me assure : 
Their hearts are high, their might is great, 

Who well endure. 

It was this same poet of spring and love— with little affec- 
tion for church and clergy — who drew his sword upon the 
Bishop of Poitiers when that prelate was in the very act of 
excommunicating him because of some notorious scandal. 
But the doughty bishop was too quick for him. " Strike," 
said he, " for I have done." " That I shall not," said Wil- 
liam, sheathing his sword, " for I think too ill of you to 
send you to Paradise." 

Of greater and more abundant poetic gifts, and of a more 
copious output, was Bernard of Ventadorn (or Ventadour), 
son of a baker, and foremost among the sweet singers of 
Provence. Born about 1130, his poetic powers were fostered 
by his patron and seignior, Ebles II. It was the youthful 
wife of Ebles — the lively and gentle Adelaide of Montpellier 
— whom he first enshrined in his verses. They came to love 
one another, and this did not please the lady's husband; so 
Bernard was given his conge. Going thence, he found con- 
solation at the feet of the Duchess of Normandy, who was no 
less a personage than Eleanor, granddaughter of William of 
Poitiers, divorced from Henry VII of France and married to 

86 



LYRIC POETRY 

Henry II of England, becoming the mother of Richard Coeur 
de Lion. The youthful Bernard, at this time, was ten years 
younger than Eleanor — she herself was but thirty-three, and 
wondrously attractive. 

Richard Coeur de Lion (1157-1199), warrior, King of 
England and troubadour, was made prisoner after his return 
from the third Crusade, by Henry IV, Emperor of Germany. 
Richard's favorite troubadour, Blondel de Nesles, traveled 
throughout the empire in search of his place of captivity, 
singing at every stronghold a song which he and Richard 
had composed. At the Castle of Durrenstein, his faithful- 
ness was rewarded by hearing Richard's voice in answer. 
Blondel made known the whereabouts of the royal prisoner 
to the Queen Mother in England, who soon ransomed her son. 

" Needs must I sing, I have no other choice, 
Although I find but grief and weariness ; 

Still, it is always better to rejoice, 
Yielding to grief is ever profitless: 

Yet not as one beloved I sing my lay, 

But as in sorrow, pensive and astray, 
And since of good I see no likeliness, 

By words I am forever led away. 

" One thing I tell in which I naught deceive — 
That in all love is chance and fickleness; 

And were I able her control to leave, 

It were more worth than did I France possess; 

But in despair and madness oft I say, 

Better the memory of her charms should stay, 
Of her great wisdom and sweet gentleness, 

Than to hold all the world beneath my sway." l 

These verses are the work of Thiebaut IV (1201-1253), 
who preeminently naturalized in the North the graceful 
compositions of the troubadours. Grandson of a king of 
Navarre, son and successor of a count of Champagne, edu- 

1 Sismondi notes that the poems of the King of Navarre are exceedingly 
difficult to comprehend. Antique words were long considered in France 
as more poetical than modern ones; and thus, while the language of prose 
was polished and perfected, that of poetry retained all its early obscurity. 

87 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

cated in the South and passing his life among the men of the 
North — he was admirably qualified as a poetic adapter. He 
imitated the troubadours, but in doing so he elevated their 
songs, and seasoned them with a little of the salt of the 
trouveres. 

Froissart, called kistorien errant (wandering historian) 
— author of ballades, rondeaux, virelais — is a charming nar- 
rator even in verse. There is nothing more ingenious than 
his Dit du Florin (What the Florin said) — a piquant con- 
versation between the author and a solitary piece of money 
which, by chance, remained in his purse; nothing is more 
amusing than Li Debat du Cheval et du Levrier — the dia- 
logue between the horse that carries the poet on his adven- 
turous excursions and the faithful hound that follows him. 
In a long allegory entitled Li Horloge d' Amour (The Clock 
of Love) he compares, piece by piece, the heart of man with 
a clock. Each passion corresponds to a part of the machine : 
desire is the main spring, beauty serves as a balance-wheel, 
and so on. Here is a brief specimen of his verse taken from 
Longfellow's Poetry of Europe. 

Take time while yet it is in view, 

For Fortune is a fickle fair; 
Days fade, and others spring anew, 

Then take the moment still in view. 

What boots to toil and cares pursue? 

Each month a new moon hangs in air; 
Take then the moment still in view, 

For Fortune is a fickle fair. 

Arnaud Daniel, of the Perigord group of troubadours, 
Petrarch has placed in his Triomphes (Fourth Triomphe) ; 
and Dante in his Purgatory says of him: " This one sur- 
passes all the poets of his country by his love songs and his 
romance prose/ ' 

Guiraut de Bornelh, or Borneil, 1 who loved and sang in 
the first half of the thirteenth century, belongs well up in the 

1 He was the first troubadour who made a chanson, as, up to that time, 
were called verses, but never songs. 
88 



LYRIC POETRY 

list of troubadours. His ancient biographer, indeed, insists 
that there was never a better troubadour; and the weight 
of opinion seems to be with him, and against the judgment 
of Dante, who preferred Arnaut Daniel. In the winter, 
Guiraut de Bornelh studied in one of the schools where, it 
would seem, formal instruction in the troubadour poetry was 
afforded at this particular period ; and ' ' all summer ' ' says 
his biographer, " he journeyed from court to court, accom- 
panied by two jongleurs 1 who performed his songs. Guiraut 
was a master of the chanson; his love songs are remarkable 
for their lyric power and profound emotion. And, late in 
life, when a civil and semireligious war blackened the beauty 
of the land, he rose to his full height as the poet of his coun- 
try's desolation. The loftiness of his amatory sentiment 
appears in an aubade (" Beis glorios, verais lums e clar- 
datz "), of which these stanzas are but a part : 

All-glorious king, who dost illuminate 
All ways of men, upon thy grace I wait; 
Praying thy shelter for my spirit's queen; 
Whom all the darkling hours I have not seen; 
And now the dawn is near. 

Sleepest or wakest, lady of my vows ? 
Oh, sleep no more, but lift thy quiet brows; 
For now the Orient's most lovely star 
Grows large and bright, welcoming from afar 
The dawn that now is near. 

Oh, sleep no more, but gracious audience give; 
What time with the awakening birds I strive, 
Who seek the day amid the leafage dark, 
To me, to me, not to that other, hark, 
For now the dawn is near. 

Among the well-known troubadours may be mentioned: 
Marcabrun (probably a contemporary of William of Poi- 
tiers), whose verses are so rarely concerned with love that 

1 In company with a troubadour were usually one or two jongleurs, who 
afforded diversion to the audience with jokes and juggles, and sometimes 
performed the songs. 

89 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

he enjoys a unique distinction as the only troubadour person- 
ally immune to that malady. The shockingly tragic history 
of William of Cabestaing together with that of his sweetheart, 
the Lady Soremonda, lends a peculiar interest to his poems, 
seven of which have been preserved. 1 The story runs that 
Raymond of Roussillon killed Cabestaing from jealousy, and 
then served his heart in a repast to Lady Raymond. After 
she had unsuspectingly partaken of it, her husband exultingly 
made known to her the fact. She replied that since she had 
tasted such noble food, she would taste no other, and starved 
to death. 2 Raimon de Miraval " loved a great many ladies, 
some of whom treated him well, and others ill, ' ' and he wrote 
verses which showed less sincerity than ingenuity and grace. 
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras whose singular adventure with the 
Lady Beatrice of Montferrat has been set forth in detail by 
his ancient biographer — a poet in whose elaborate " lament " 
" we seem to hear the trumpet contending with the lute." 
Vaqueiras fell in battle along with his master Montferrat, in 
the expedition against Constantinople in 1207. Pierre Car- 
denal 3 subtle, intellectual, inquiring, was a kind of Omar 
Khayyam of the Middle Ages. In one of his daring sirventes, 
he rehearses the bold defense he means to make when sum- 
moned before the judgment seat of God. Another trouba- 
dour, Peter of Auvergne, was surnamed i ' The Ancient, ' ' and 
Bertrand of Alamanon was but an echo of his greater pre- 
decessors. 

Some of the troubadours followed the crusaders to Pales- 
tine, but even they dreamed only of love ; one, Prince Geoffroy 
Rudel de Blaya, set sail for the Holy Land only because he 
was possessed by a strange passion for the Countess of Tripoli, 
whom he had never seen. So he went to offer her his heart, 
and to die when he should look into her beautiful eyes. 

1 La Curne de-St. Palaye spent many years in collecting manuscripts of 
Provengal poetry, most of which had never been printed. Millot pub- 
lished translations from this collection. 

2 The same story is told of the "gentil Sire de Coucy" and "la dame du 
Fayel " ; this novel, published in 1839 by Crapelet, deserves, according to 
Gaston Paris, a place of honor in the history of literature. 

3 "Indisputably the subtlest and most intellectual spirit among them 
all" (the troubadours), says the author of Troubadours and Trouveres. 

90 



LYRIC POETRY 

Edmond Rostand has made use of this episode for his play- 
entitled La Princesse Lointaine (The Distant Princess). 

The troubadours laid more stress on the rhyme and rhythm, 
on the form of expression, than on the subject matter, although 
themes for inspiration were not wanting: the Conquest of 
England by William the Conqueror, the capture of Jerusa- 
lem by Godfrey de Bouillon, the capture of Sicily by Guiscard 
and de Hauteville — great events to excite the imagination 
and inspire enthusiasm. 

The wars of the Albigenses and the Waldensians, helped 
to silence the troubadour's song; after the wars, they still 
sang, but it was not the harmonious song of love, of spring, 
of the blue skies of that climate of Paradise, but the song of 
hatred and malediction. Lack of profound inspiration is 
the true cause of the rapid decadence of Provencal poetry. 
In the learned or labored lyricism, nothing is popular — 
neither the foundation nor the form. In the overrefinement 
of thought, in the artificiality of the verses, these works suffer 
from an essential aversion to the common naturalness; for 
good sense they substitute spirit, and their goal is the pleasure 
of an elite of the initiated, and not universal intelligibility. 
However, after a century of noble pastime and fashion, the 
learned lyricism declined. The French barons cooled off 
and abandoned it; but, as had happened with the epic, the 
burghers picked up the art which had lost the favor of the 
nobles, and assured it a new lease of life. In the communi- 
ties of Picardy this gallant poetry is continued by Bodel, 
Moniot, Adam de la Halle, 1 till the last years of the thirteenth 
century. Though Provencal still remained the language of 
the people, its literature perished, and was revived only in 
the course of centuries — a revival accomplished rather arti- 
ficially and without the recovery of the ancient vigor. 

1 Jean Bodel and Adam de la Halle were both from Arras, a town with 
a great literary reputation, which caused Guilbert de Berneville, in one of 
his chansons, to represent God Himself descending to earth to learn the 
art of poesy in Arras. 



CHAPTER VII 

POPULAR POETRY 

With the waning power of knighthood and the blossom- 
ing of burghership, lyric poetry fled from the crumbling walls 
of castles to towns and villages, and throwing off its garb of 
allegory and romance, gave vent to the natural and joyful 
feeling of the people in melody — and thus song was born dur- 
ing the fifteenth century in France. The few poets of note 
who bridged the dark Middle Ages and the Renaissance, were 
Charles d 'Orleans, Villon and Basselin. We hear Olivier 
Basselin, the village Anacreon of Normandy, laughing and 
singing 1 — " chantant en beuvant, et beuvant en chantant " 
(" sinking as he drinks, drinking as he sings ") : 

" Si voulez que je cause et preche, 
Et parle latin proprement, 
Tenez ma bouche toujours fralche, 
De bon vin Tarrosant souvent. 
Car je vous dis certainement, 
Quand j'ai seche la bouche, 
Je n'ai plus d'entendement 
Ni d'esprit qu'une souche." 1 

His melodious rhymes were the first to brighten the life of 
dreary drudgery led by the people, and to comfort, like a 
soothing potion, the hearts of the poor, crushed and discour- 
aged by taxes and war. 

This Olivier Basselin, creator of the modern song, gave 
free vent in his verse to his good-humor, to his copious mock- 

1 If you would have me sing and preach, and speak Latin properly, my 
tongue must be freshened and watered with sparkling wine. For I assure 
you that when my throat is parched I have no more mental apprehension 
than a log. 

92 



POPULAR POETRY 

ery, and to his sturdy Norman hatred of the English. He 
was born at Vire, a small town in Normandy, about 1390, 
and was proprietor of a fuller's mill for the manufacture of 
cloth. Situated under the Cordeliers Hill, near the Bridge 
of Vau, its ruins, which have preserved the name of the Basse- 
lin mill, are still to be seen. On the picturesque banks of the 
Vire river, Olivier sang his poems, to which his fellow citizens 
gave the title, still preserved, of Vaux de Vire, after the name 
of the place which inspired them. During the entire fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries the songs were called Vaux de Vire, 
then Vaudeville, by corruption. In the seventeenth century 
they went indifferently by the names of chansons and vaude- 
villes, as we see in Boileau, who in his Art Poetique, uses both 
terms to designate the same thing. Finally, it was called 
chanson only, since vaudeville meant something quite differ- 
ent. The good Norman fuller loved especially three things: 
wine, cider, and peace — wine more than cider, and cider more 
than peace. It was Basselin who introduced into the Bocage * 
the custom of singing songs after repasts. He had a remark- 
able facility in improvising songs. In his Vau de Vire, en- 
titled " Probity and Joy," he showed good-nature sharpened 
with a touch of malice. Picturesqueness of expression was not 
wanting, as is demonstrated in this lively and charming 
quatrain : 

Tou jours dans le vin vermeil 
Ou autre liqueur bonne, 

On voit un petit soleil 
Qui fretille et rayonne. 2 

The most celebrated of his songs is the one entitled A mon nez 
(To my nose) : 

II vaut bien mieux cacher son nez dans un grand verre : 

II est mieux assure* qu'en un casque de guerre. 

Pour cornette ou guidon suivre plutot on doit 

Les branches d'hierre ou d'if qui montrent ou Ton boit. 8 

1 A name given to several small countries of ancient France, of which 
the two best known were the Bocage normand and the Bocage vendeen. 

2 Always in the rosy wine, or other good liquor, one sees a little sun 
that sparkles and beams. 

» It is better to hide one's nose in a big glass: 'tis more secure than a 

93 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Basselin was killed in the Battle of Agincourt. His songs, 
oft-repeated by the people of Normandy and orally trans- 
mitted by the rhapsodists of Rouen, Vire, and Falaise (towns 
in Normandy), were printed for the first time about 1576, 
under the title of Livre des chants nouveaux et vaux-de-Vire 
d' Olivier Basselin, by Jean Le Houx, poet and lawyer of Vire. 
This, no doubt, accounts for the rejuvenation of the style, the 
clearness of the verses, and the omission of archaisms ; and this 
may also account for the erroneous idea, maintained by some, 
that Basselin 's songs, ' ' which show his talent and his ignorance 
of the rules of art, ' ' were composed by Jean Le Houx. 

Charles d 'Orleans (father of Louis XII) court poet, 
spoke the language of the courtiers — the language of Blois, 
of Chenonceaux, of London. Neither his long captivity in 
England (1411-1440), nor the misfortune which befell his 
family and his country, 1 brought forth even one utterance of 
profound passion from this poet. His poems breathe a spirit 
of unquenchable joy, and although commonplace in concep- 
tion, reveal beauty of expression, fine susceptibility, and facil- 
ity of form. Poetry was for him not the simple expression 
of the soul — it was a kind of " learned embroidery " — made 
by the imagination. Besides the poems written in prison 
in the English language, he left several hundred ballads, 
songs, roundelays, etc. In all his poems, of which there are 
two large volumes, there is not one verse which suggests vul- 
garity, for Charles d 'Orleans remained a princely gentleman 
in every line he wrote. 

After his release he lived in the Chateau de Blois, sur- 
rounded by a court of poets and literary lights, and continued 
to write poetry, a task which had consoled him for many a 
weary day during his captivity. This court was a poetic 

helmet. For pendant or banner, one ought rather to follow the branehes 
of ivy or yew, which show where one drinks. 

Formerly the very small inns were called bouchons (tavern bushes) ; to 
distinguish them, from other houses, branches of yew or fir were fastened 
above the doors. To this day in all the small villages of Normandy, Brit- 
tany and other parts of France one may see the bouchon (bush) over the 
tavern doors. 

1 His father was assassinated and his wife died. At the Battle of Agin- 
court, where he was taken prisoner, the flower of French chivalry perished. 

94 



POPULAR POETRY 

arena where literary tournaments were held, and where the 
rivals contested for prizes in ballad or song. Gaston Paris 
writes: " It has been shrewdly remarked that there is, to 
say the least, a strange coincidence in the relations so differ- 
ent of Charles of Orleans and Villon with Louis XI; the 
same lips which uttered the words that killed the last songster 
of the Middle Ages freed the first modern poet. ' ' x 

Villon's real name was Francois de Montcorbier. He was 
born in the vicinity of Paris in 1431, and owes his surname of 
Villon to Guillaume de Villon, canon of Saint-Benoit, who 
took him under his protection and gave him an excellent 
education. At twenty-one, he took the degree of Master of 
Arts at the University of Paris, but soon his roguish nature 
asserted itself. His motto " II n'est tresor que de vivre a 
son aise " (none such treasure as living as you please), re- 
veals his vagabond nature. This child of the Latin Quar- 
ter, who went through all the vicissitudes of life, who starved, 
stole, was imprisoned, tortured, and stood face to face with 
the gallows, brought forth in his works a veritable treasure 
of original and tender lyricism. He is the most original and 
independent poet of the transition period from the Middle 
Ages to the Renaissance, and the first prominent and artistic 
representative of that quintessence of French spirit called 
gauloiserie. Francois Villon expresses for the first time the 
lively, bold, mocking, and sometimes sad, popular idiom, in 
verse coming from the depths of the soul and laden with the 
weight of misery. 

The place of this man " de povre et petite extrace " is 
foremost among the poets of France. " One sees the wings 
of the poet," says Nisard, " sprouting under the rags of the 
beggar." This copious ballad-maker, fed on free repasts, is 
preoccupied especially with the idea of death. He is the last 
of those poets who have sung of God, of their lady, of their 

1 Allusion to the harsh words spoken by Louis XI to Charles of Orleans 
and which are said to have hastened his death. What the actual words 
were is not known. Claude de Seyssel simply says: "Le roi le contemna 
de paroles sans avoir £gard a la majeste* de sa vieillesse ni a sa loyaute\ 
Dont, de regret qu'il en eut . . . il finit sa vie dedans deux jours." The 
freeing of the first modern poet refers to the release of Villon from prison, 
when Louis XI passed through Meung. 

95 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

naive and rude passions, always with a profound melan- 
choly, with a feeling of the shortness of joy and the long dura- 
tion of pain — and " death at the end of it all," as Shake- 
speare has it. Jules Lemaitre writes : ' ' Love and Death were 
Villon's muses. I dare say that he was the purest, the most 
precise, the most classic in form, of all our poets before the 
seventeenth century, and in the main, the most ' personal ' — 
the only one — before the Romanticists." 

His poems express constant rejuvenation and the accent of 
truth throughout his writings makes their charm and their 
merit. He shows himself without mask and without pretence 
in the frank expression of his wrongdoings and his regrets. 
His poetry, Gaston Paris notes, is essentially lyric, in the sense 
which the modern critic usually applies to the word — reflect- 
ing as clearly as possible the soul of the poet in his verses; 
not any poet has surpassed Villon in this respect; nay, not 
any poet has equaled him, will never perhaps equal him in 
one thing— in his absolute sincerity. 

Villon is a creature of a transition period, but with re- 
spect to the basis of his poetry he belongs no longer to the 
Middle Ages. According to Lanson he is entirely modern — 
the first poet who is frankly, completely modern. 1 These 
verses, and the things they contain, proceed from the very 
depth of the experience and the feelings of the man ; they ex- 
press his inmost sensibilities. Here we have a poetry which is 
the outcry of a poor soul stricken with abject misery— and 
that alone. In this voice, mocking and plaintive by turns — 
which cries out its pain or its vice — there sounds sometimes 
the cry of eternal humanity. We feel it, and it is this which 
makes him great. 

The best known of Villon's verses are still widely read 
and quoted. His works were very popular. After the first 
edition, edited shortly after his death, there appeared be- 
tween the years 1498 (edited by Marot) and 1542, twenty- 
seven new ones. 2 Villon's poems show his melancholic gayety 
and vivacity of mind, his scintillating wit and his impetuos- 

1 Boileau in his Art poetique says: 

Villon sut le premier, dans ces siecles grossiers, 
DSbrouiller l'art confus de nos vieux romanciers. 

8 See Moscher's English edition. 
96 



POPULAR POETRY 

ity of speech as well as clearness and grace. The Petit 
Testament, written in 1456 when Villon prepared to depart 
for Angers, to implore the generosity of an uncle supposed to 
be rich, is in the form of legacies. He first announces his 
departure, and, believing the voyage to be long and perilous, 
pretends to dispose of his worldly possessions. He mentions 
his friends from all ranks in life — the grave functionary of 
parliament as well as the professional thief. He wills to his 
solicitor a ballad, by way of payment; to his tavern keeper, 
his debts; to his barber, his hair; to a drunkard, his empty 
barrel ; to a very fat friend, two recipes to reduce his embon- 
point; and to grandmother earth, his body, etc. 

His Grand Testament, written in 1461, shows his remark- 
able ability and is the first example in European literature 
of a poetry profoundly and entirely personal. Among the 
most touching verses in the Grand Testament is a prayer to 
the Virgin for his mother: 

Dame du ciel, regente terrienne 

Emperiere des infernaux palus, 
Recevez moi, votre humble chretienne, 

Que comprise soie entre vos £lus, 

Ce nonobstant qu'oncques rien ne valus. 
Les biens de vous, ma dame et ma maitresse; 
Sont trop plus grans que je ne suis pecheresse; 

Sans lesquels biens ame ne peut merir, 
N'entrer es cieulx, je n'en suis menteresse: 

En cette foy, je vueil vivre et mourir. 

His Mother's Service to Our Lady 

Lady of Heaven and earth, and therewithal 

Crowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,-~ 
I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call, 

Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell, 
Albeit in naught I be commendable. 
But all mine undeserving may not mar 
Such mercies as thy sovereign mercies are ; 

Without the which (as true words testify) 
No soul can reach thy Heaven so fair and far. 

Even in this faith I choose to live and die. 

8 97 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Unto thy Son say thou that I am His, 

And to me graceless make Him gracious. 
Sad Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss, 

Nor yet the sorrowful clerk Theophilus, 
Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus 
Though to the Fiend his bounden service was. 
Oh, help me, lest in vain for me should pass 

(Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!) 
The blessed Host and scaring of the Mass. 

Even in this faith I choose to live and die. 

A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old, 

I am, and nothing learn 'd in letter-lore. 
Within my parish cloister I behold 

A painted Heaven where harps and lutes adore, 

And eke an Hell whose damned folk seethe full sore : 
One bringeth fear, the other joy to me. 
That joy, great Goddess, make thou mine to be, — 

Thou of whom all must ask it even as I ; 
And that which faith desires, that let it see. 

For in this faith I choose to live and die. 

O excellent Virgin Princess! thou didst bear 
King Jesus, the most excellent comforter, 

Who even of this our weakness craved a share 
And for our sake stooped to us from on high, 

Offering to death His young life, sweet and fair. 

Such as He is, Our Lord, I Him declare. 
And in this faith I choose to live and die. 

Into this Testament Villon incorporated a large number of his 
older ballads, a genre he brought to perfection in the Ballade 
des Dames du temps jadis (Ballad of Old-Time Ladies), and 
the Ballade des Pendus (Ballad of the Hanging), the " Epi- 
taph in Form of a Ballad," which the poet composed in the 
prison of Meung-sur-Loire, when he and his companions were 
under condemnation of death by hanging : 

Freres humains, qui apres nous vivez 
N'ayez les cueurs contre nous endurciz, 

Car si pitie d'e nous pouvres avez, 

Dieu en aura plus tost de vous merciz; 
98 



POPULAR POETRY 

Vous nous voyez cy attachez, cinq, six, 
Quant de la chair, que trop avons nourrie, 
Elle est pieca devoree et pourrie, 

Et nous, les os, devenons cendre et pouldre, 
De notre mal personne ne s'en rie, 

Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absouldre. 

Se vous clamons freres, pas ne devez 

Avoir desdaing, quoy que fusmes occis 
Par justice; toustefois vous mesmes scavez 

Que tous hommes n'ont pas bon sens assis; 

Intercedez doncques, de cueur rassis, 
Envers le Filz de la Vierge Marie, 
Que sa grace ne soit pour nous tarie, 

Nous preservant de l'infernale fouldre; 
Nous sommes mors, ame ne nous harie, 

Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absouldre. 

La pluye nous a buez et lavez, 

Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz, 
Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez, 

Et arrache la barbe et les sourcilz, 
Jamais nul temps nous ne nous sommes rassis 
Puis ca puis la, comme le vent varie, 
(A son plaisir) sans cesser nous charie, 

Plus becquetez d'oyseaulx que dez a couldre; 
Hommes ici n'usez de mocquerie 

Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absouldre. 

Prince Jesus, qui sur tous seigneurie, 
Garde qu'Enfer n'ayt de nous la maistrie, 

A luy n'ayons que faire ne que souldre; 
Ne soyez done de nostre confrairie, 

Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absouldre. 1 

1 Men, brother men, that after us yet live, 

Let not your hearts too hard against us be; 
For if some pity of us poor men ye give, 

The sooner God shall take of you pity. 

Here are we five or six strung up, you see, 
And here the flesh that all too well we fed 
Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred, 

And we the bones grow dust and ash withal; 
Let no man laugh at us discomforted, 

But pray to God that He forgive us all. 
99 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Villon's charming Ballad of Old-Time Ladies, has invited 
more than one eminent poet to translate it into English : 

Dites-moi, ou n'en quel pays 

Est Flora, la belle Romaine ; 

Archipiada ni Thais, 1 

Qui fut sa cousine germaine; 

Echo, parlant quand bruit on mene 

Dessus riviere ou sur etan, 

Qui beaute eut trop plus qu' humaine, 

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? 



If we call on you, brothers, to forgive, 

Ye should not hold our prayer in scorn, though we 
Were slain by law; yet know that all alive 

Have not wit alway to walk righteously; 

Make therefore intercession heartily 
With Him that of a virgin's womb was bred, 
That His grace be not as dry a well-head 

For us, nor let hell's thunder on us fall; 
We are dead; let no man harry or vex us dead, 

But pray to God that He forgive us all. 

The rain has washed and laundered us all five, 
And the sun dried and blackened; yea, perdie, 

Ravens and pies with beaks that rend and rive 
Have dug our eyes out, and plucked off for fee 
Our beards and eyebrows; never we are free, 

Not once, to rest; but here and there still sped, 

Driven at its wild will by the wind's change led, 
More pecked of birds than fruits on garden-wall; 

Men, for God's love, let no gibe here be said, 
But pray to God that He forgive us all. 

Prince Jesus, that of all art lord and head, 
Keep us, that hell be not our bitter bed; 

We have naught to do in such a master's hall; 
Be not ye therefore, of our fellow head, 

But pray to God that He forgive us all. 

1 Archipiada was the wife of Crates, a Greek cynic philosopher. Thais 
was a famous courtesan of Athens, and mistress of Alexander the Great in 
the fourth century b.c. 

100 



POPULAR POETRY 

Ou est la tres sage Helois, 
Pour qui fut chatre et puis moine 
Pierre Abailart 1 a Saint Denys? 
Pour son amour eut cette essoyne. 
Semblablement ou est la royne 2 
Qui commanda que Buridan 
Fust jete en un sac en Seine? 
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? 

La Royne Blanche * comme un lis, 

Qui chant ait a voix de sirene, 

Berte aux grands pieds * Bietris, Allis; 



Harembourges 8 qui taint le Maine, 
Et Jehanne, la bonne lorraine, 
Qu' Anglais brulerent a Rouen: 
Ou sont-ilz, Vierge souveraine? 
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? 



1 Abelard taught philosophy on Mount Ste. Genevieve, where his dis- 
ciples came to hear him. The philosophers of the Schools were his enemies, 
holding opinions opposed to his. Abelard was much admired by the Abbe 
Fulbert, who liked to discuss philosophy with him. But the Abbe" had a 
niece, and, in spite of his philosophy, Abelard fell in love with her. As a 
result of this passion for Heloi'se, the Abbe\ filled with fury, had a de- 
grading mutilation inflicted upon the philosopher. Then Abelard — ill, 
sad, and tired of life — became a monk. The unhappy Heloise, suffering 
as much as her unfortunate lover, also entered a monastery. In 1817 the 
ashes of both lovers were placed in a mausoleum built for them in the 
Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. For an original and unconventional 
view of Abelard's conduct, the reader is referred to an essay in the col- 
lected works of Mark Twain. The lover of Heloi'se is therein pitilessly 
impaled on the shaft of a caustic humor. It is Mark Twain in his serious 
vein, and at his best. 

2 Jeanne, wife of Philip the Fair. A legend connects the philosopher 
Jean Buridan with the debauches of Jeanne de Navarre in the Tower of 
Nesle. 

3 Queen Blanche, of Castile, mother of Louis IX, the saint. 
•"Bertha of the Big Feet," according to tradition the mother of 

Charlemagne. 

1 Harembourges was the daughter of the Comte du Maine. 

101 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Prince, n'enquerez de semaine 
Ou elles sont, ni de cet an, 
Que ce refrain ne vous remaine : 
Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan? ! 

Of these ballads Ferdinand Brunetiere writes: Is there 
anything more grewsome than the ' ' Ballad of the Hanging ' ' f 
of more vivid coloring than La Grosse Margotl a more naive 
conception than the ballad which Villon made at the request 
of his mother? and since one cannot mention Villon without 
recalling it — is there anything more human in melancholy 



1 Tell me now in what hidden way is 

Lady Flora the lovely Roman? 
Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thai's, 

Neither of them the fairer woman? 
Where is Echo, beheld of no man, 

Only heard on river and mere, — 
She whose beauty was more than human? . . . 

But where are the snows of yester-year? 

Where's Heloise, the learned nun, 

For whose sake Abeillard, I ween, 
Lost manhood and put priesthood on? 

(From love he won such dule and teen!) 
And where, I pray you, is the Queen 

Who willed that Buridan should steer 
Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? . . . 

But where are the snows of yester-year? 

White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies, 

With a voice like any mermaiden, — 
Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice, 

And Ermengarde, the lady of Maine, — 
And that good Joan whom Englishmen 

At Rouen doomed and burned her there, — 
Mother of God, where are they then? 

But where are the snows of yester-year? 

Nay, never ask this week, fair lord, 

Where they are gone, nor yet this year, 
Except with this for an overword, — 
But where are the snows of yester-year? 

— Translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 
102 



POPULAR POETRY 

than the ' ' Ballad of Old-Time Ladies ' ' ? But, adds M. Brune- 
tiere, it is not Villon who has been imitated. Those who cre- 
ated a school are the ' ', great rhetoricians ' ' : Jean Meschinot, 
Jean Molinet, Guillaume Cretin — the Raminagrobis * of Rabe- 
lais — Jean Marot, Lemaire de Beiges. Already prosaic in 
the hands of Alain Chartier, poetry in their hands became 
pretentiously didactic. Did they themselves realize it, and 
not being able to create beautiful poetry, is it for that reason 
they made it artificial by overloading it with infinite compli- 
cations and deplorable ornaments? " 

Whatever Villon may have been— perhaps more sinned 
against than sinning — his soul must have retained purity 
to find such expression. His beautiful ballads when once 
heard, leave their rhythm in our memories. Swinburne has 
crowned him " Prince of All Ballad Makers ": 



Bird of the bitter, bright, gray golden morn 
Scarce risen upon the dusk of dolorous years, 

First of us all and sweetest singer born, 

Whose far shrill note the world of new men hears 
Cleave the cold shuddering shade as twilight clears; 

When song newborn put off the old world's attire 

And felt its tune on her changed lips expire, 
Writ foremost on the roll of them that came 

Fresh girt for service of the latter lyre, 

Villon, our sad, bad, glad, mad brother's name! 

Alas! the joy, the sorrow, and the scorn, 
That clothed thy life with hopes and sins and fears, 

And gave thee stones for bread and tares for corn 
And plume-plucked gaol-birds for thy starveling peers 
Till death dipt close their flight with shameful shears; 

Till shifts came short and loves were hard to hire, 

When lilt of song nor twitch of twangling wire 
Could buy thee bread or kisses ; when light frame 

Spurned like a ball and haled through brake and briar, 
Villon, our sad, bad, glad, mad brother's name ! 

1 A word used to ridicule a conceited man. Name given by La Fontaine 
to an old cat. 

103 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Poor splendid wings so frayed and soiled and torn ! 

Poor kind wild eyes so dashed with light quick tears! 
Poor perfect voice, most blithe when most forlorn, 

That rings athwart the sea whence no man steers 

Like joy-bells crossed with death-bells in our ears! 
What far delight has cooled the fierce desire 
That like some ravenous bird was strong to tire 

On that frail flesh and soul consumed with flame, 
But left more sweet than roses to respire, 

Villon, our sad, bad, glad, mad brother's name? 

ENVOI 

Prince of sweet songs made out of tears and fire, 
A harlot was thy nurse, a god thy sire ; 

Shame soiled thy song, and song assoiled thy shame. 
But from thy feet now death has washed the mire, 
Love reads out first at head of all our quire, 

Villon, our sad, bad, glad, mad brother's name. 

— Algernon Charles Swinburne. 



CHAPTER Vin 

THE RENAISSANCE 

For more than two centuries the literature of France 
suffered from inertia: the age of chivalrous poetry was over, 
people no longer cared for the insipid allegories, the myster- 
ies had been forbidden, the conte in verse had completely dis- 
appeared, and literature took the form of prose in the nouvelle 
imitated from the Italian — a special genre of the fifteenth 
century. It was introduced into France with the Cent nou- 
velles nouvelles by Antoine de La Salle in imitation of Boccac- 
cio 's Decameron. 

The Monologue is also a production of this century, and 
the Franc Archer de Bagnolet, written by a canon of Reims, 
is its principal exponent. An entire literature for and against 
women, occupied many writers, an example of which is the 
tiresome and prolix Champion des Dames (The Champion of 
Women), by Martin Le Franc, written about 1442, in imita- 
tion of the Roman de la Rose, and which was reprinted in 
1530 by Galliot du Pre. In 1542 Gratien du Pont wrote a 
long poem harshly censuring women, called Controverses des 
Sexes masculin et feminin (Controversies of the Masculine 
and Feminine Sexes) . 

The Renaissance movement gave a new impetus to this 
languishing state and wrought great changes in the literature 
of France. Italy was the cradle of the Renaissance — the great 
literary, artistic, and philosophical movement which was 
called into life about the middle of the fourteenth century, 
and which spread throughout Europe during the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries. Three great historical facts prepared 
the way : the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 ; 
the wars under the French kings in Italy; and the great dis- 
coveries of the fifteenth century. 

105 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Constan- 
tinople became the center of all that was left of Roman culture 
and learning in the West until it was captured by the Turks. 
Many Greek and Latin scholars living in Constantinople, 
among them the famous Lascaris, fled to Italy and carried 
with them rich spoils of the Greek literature, intellectual 
treasures of the languages, politics, philosophy, and religious 
beliefs of antiquity. These savants opened schools in Rome, 
Venice, and Milan, and interpreted the great writers of 
Greece and Rome: Plato, Sophocles, Aristotle, Euripides, 
Virgil, Horace, Terence, etc., to numbers of students from all 
parts of Italy. Italy's great writers: Dante, Petrarch, Boc- 
caccio and others, made known these works of antiquity, and 
brought to light many old manuscripts which they had found 
in the archives of convents. The first one to break with the 
mediaeval traditions was Petrarch. He founded a new school 
to trace the origins of the great Latin writers to their very 
sources. The basis of almost all of the new school of poetry 
in France and England as well as Italy is due to him. The 
Este of Ferrara, the Medici of Florence — Leon X, a pope of 
that brilliant family, encouraged exploration in the domain 
of antiquity. Their liberality was unbounded in the pro- 
tection of savants, artists, and humanists. 1 Paul III, 2 Sixtus 
V, 3 men of profound politics and statesmanship, were great 
patrons of literature, art, and reform. Poggio, Angelo, 
Poliziana, Pico de la Mirandola, Machiavelli, Bembo, and the 
learned printers of the family of Aide — popularized by their 

1 Humanists were scholars who at the Revival of Learning in the four- 
teenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries devoted themselves to the 
study of the language, literature, and antiquities of Rome, and afterwards 
of Greece. — Murray. 

2 Paul III (Alessandro Farnese) was pope, 1534-49. He excommuni- 
cated Henry VIII of England in 1538; in 1545 he convoked the Council of 
Trent. 

3 Felice Peretti, Pope of Rome, 1585-90. He determined the number of 
cardinals to be seventy. " Elected as successor of Gregory XIII because 
the cardinals thought him near death as he walked, bent up, leaning on a 
staff. It is said that as soon as the vote was assured, he arose with such 
a brisk movement that he made his neighbors draw back, threw away his 
staff, raised his head, and intoned the Te Deum in a voice that made the 
window panes of the hall rattle." — Larousse, Encycl. 

106 



THE RENAISSANCE 

translations and publications the master-works of Greek and 
Latin literature. 

The expeditions into Italy repeated under three kings 
(Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I), put the French 
in touch with the antique treasures. Italy preceded France 
by half a century on the road of Renaissance, but she did not 
feel this renewed impulse so strongly as France did, having 
always been brilliant and civilized with her majestic monu- 
ments, her even more majestic ruins, and with a home cul- 
ture which had never quite broken with classical tradition. 
Nor did the Renaissance produce so tremendous and rad- 
ical a change as in France, where the new sources of inspi- 
ration for poetry, thought, and science caused an agitation 
and upheaval heretofore unequaled in the annals of her 
history. 

For the literature of France the renewed study of Greek 
and Roman culture meant a rupture with the Celtic past. 
The old French literature was strictly a national literature, 
for even the chansons de geste which treated of classical 
antiquity were depicted in true French spirit. With the 
Renaissance, the doctrine of humanism and hellenism espoused 
by writers and thinkers found expression in their works. 

The third great factor to further this movement, which 
excited and emancipated the human mind, was the succession 
of remarkable discoveries. The discovery of America, the 
Copernican Revolution, the art of engraving (1422), and 
above all the invention of printing by Gutenberg, 1 all these 
gave an impetus to scientific research. The art of printing 
multiplied and diffused the master-works of ancient genius 
heretofore inaccessible because of their rarity and cost. The 
humanists found most puissant auxiliaries in printing, which 
spread their works throughout Europe, and in the protection 

1 It is said that Gutenberg had seen at Venice, at the house of Pamphilo 
Castaldi de Feltre, certain little wooden sticks used by the Chinese in 
printing, which Castaldi had received from Marco Polo, the famous Vene- 
tian traveler and author. It was Marco Polo who gave Columbus the idea 
of seeking the Indies in the West. Marco Polo is thus possibly the prime 
cause of the two greatest discoveries of the modern world. Mendel, an 
Alsatian monk, had already devised characters to be used in printing, but 
he concealed his discovery. 

107 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

of the sovereigns. 1 It was Charles VIII who introduced the 
Renaissance into France. The masterpieces revealed to him 
in his expedition into Italy had incited his admiration. Under 
Louis XII the new movement found a firm footing, but to 
Francis I is accorded the honor of having brought the Renais- 
sance to a flood. It triumphed under him: scholastic litera- 
ture was replaced by the critical studies of ancient texts, even 
those of the Bible, and a Latinized language clear and flexible 
took the place of the stiff and deficient language of old. 
Francis I was called the Protector, the Father of Letters and 
of Arts. He addressed himself to the scholars of all Europe ; 
he made them generous offers to attract them to his court; 
and the litterateurs, the scholars, the artists he encouraged 
with his gifts were numberless. 

Guillaume Bude, the " prodigy of France," the disciple 
of Janus Lascaris, was called by Francis I to his court. Bude 
was one of the most profound Hellenists of the century, and 
was therefore vigorously and constantly attacked by the Sor- 
bonnists. He wrote the Commentaires sur la langue grecque, 
a treatise De Asse on the coinage of the Greeks and Romans, 
and on classical learning, Annotations sur les Pandectes, and 
the Lettres grecques. In his work he showed that science 
is not an obstacle, but rather a road to the faith ; that ancient 
philosophy is a sort of preparation to the study of the Gospel. 
He occupied many important positions under Francis I and 
profited by his influence with that king in founding the Col- 
lege de France. 2 In spite of the remonstrances of the Sor- 
bonne and of Parliament, the chairs of Hebrew, Greek and 
Latin were established, to which were added those of Mathe- 
matics, Medicine, and Philosophy. 

1 Henry VII of England encouraged Italian poets to live at his court. 
Mathias Corwin, King of Hungary, was a great patron of art and literature 
and the Hungarian Renaissance dates from his reign. 

2 First called the College of the King and then the College of the Three 
Languages, after the chairs of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin had been estab- 
lished. Under Louis XIII it was known as the Royal College and during 
the Revolution as the National College. Napoleon created a chair of 
Turkish and changed the name to Imperial College. Under the Restoration 
it became the College of France and chairs of Sanskrit and Chinese were 
established. Now it is the College of France, with forty-two professors, 
and its free instruction includes the entire field of learning. 

108 



THE RENAISSANCE 

Many famous scholars added to the reputation of this 
college; among them were: Vatable or Wastebled, professor 
of Hebrew, editor of the famous Bible de Vatable, condemned 
by the Sorbonne; Danes, professor of Greek, distinguished 
orator, philosopher, and mathematician; Jean Dorat, master 
of Ronsard and poet of the PUiade; Denis Lambin, the savant 
philologer, whose slow manner of working gave the word 
lambiner to the French language. Next to Bude must be 
placed Robert and Henry Estienne, father and son. Robert 
was the first to print Bibles in France, and his orthodoxy 
soon became suspected. Henry Estienne, 1 workingman and 
man of letters, sought his recreation in the composition of 
his " Treasury of the Greek Language," and in launching 
ardent pamphlets, written in the vernacular, which attracted 
attention throughout all Europe. Under the title of " Apol- 
ogy for Herodotus," he published a lively and strange 
satire on the customs, prejudices, and excesses of his time. 
Besides encouraging the scholars, the kings of France had in- 
vited Italian artists to their courts; Leonardo da Vinci, 
Andrea del Sarte, were great favorites. The Castles of 
Amboise, Chenonceau, Blois and others were built by Italian 
architects. Through the influence of Catherine de Medici, 
the Italian language had been introduced into the French 
court, and Henri Estienne 2 in his Deux dialogues du nouveau 
language frangais italianise, protested against this invasion, 
and criticised it as the doctrine of humanism carried too far. 
In this criticism nothing escaped his pitiless fervor ; the vices, 
crimes, perversities, absurdities, hypocrisies and superstitions, 
all were exposed and depicted without reserve. He was 
banished from France. For Francis I, although he protected 
the new movement, created the censorship and decreed the 

1 Of Henry Estienne, Ronsard sang the famous toast : 

" Verse, et verse, et reverse encore Fill and fill and fill again this 

Dedans cette grande coupe d'or. great cup of gold; I would drink 

Je veux boire a Henri Estienne, to Henry Estienne, who from 

Qui des enfers nous a rendu Hades brought back to us the 

Du vieil Anacr£on perdu sweet, lost lyre of old Anacreon. 

La douce lyre teienne." 

2 To him is attributed the famous proverb: "A brebis tondue Dieu 
mesure le vent" (God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb). 

109 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

death penalty against every author of works published with- 
out his authority. Under his reign Louis de Berquin 1 and 
Estienne Dolet 2 were burned at the stake. 

Another victim of fanaticism and ignorance was Ramus 
(Pierre La Ramee). His crime consisted in writing against 
peripateticism. Since the twelfth century the doctrines of 
Aristotle had been introduced into Prance as supreme author- 
ity. The ignorant believed that Aristotle was a king of the 
Middle Ages, and even the learned stood in religious awe of 
him. In his work Dialecticas partitiones et Aristotalicae 
animadversiones, Ramus attacked the obscurity of Aristotle's 
philosophy and asserted that his logic was false. In proclaim- 
ing reason and not authority the criterion of truth, Ramus 
was the precursor of modern philosophy. 

After long and laborious researches these men, martyrs 
to their cause, conquered barbarism and ignorance, and cleared 
the path for the succeeding writers. In France the Renais- 
sance predominated until the death of Francis I (1547), and 
paved the way for the Reformation, 3 the religious revolution in 
the second half of the century. In this period, under the sons 
of Henry II (Francis II, Charles IX, and Henry III), this 
great religious question plunged France into eight civil wars, 
beginning with the massacre of Vassy in 1562 and ending with 
the Edict of Nantes in 1598 under Henry IV, by which free- 
dom of religious worship was given to the Protestants. 

The founder of the Reformation in France was Calvin. 
Jean Chauvin, called Calvin, born in 1509, at Noyon in 
Picardy, was destined for the church. He was made a 

1 De Beze wrote: "Louis de Berquin might have been the Luther of 
France had Francis been a Frederick of Saxony." 

2 Of Dolet it was said : " He had French talent, Latin genius, universal 
erudition, and courage that never failed." Francis I ordered the massacres 
of Merindol and Cabrieres, two cities occupied by the Waldensians, mem- 
bers of a reforming body of Christians — followers of Peter Waldo of Lyons 
— organized about 1170. Their chief seats were in the Alpine valleys of 
Piedmont, Dauphine, and Provence; hence the French name, Vaudois des 
Alpes, or Vaudois. By order of Francis I over three thousand were slain. 

3 Michelet says of the Reformation and its spirit: "Luther sang: a great 
audacity indeed at that epoch when humanity scarcely dared to breathe. 
That mournful picture of Holbein gives an exact idea of the time: a lean 
tiller of the soil leading two lean horses, followed by Death." 

110 



THE RENAISSANCE 

chaplain at the age of twelve (there were bishops and cardinals 
at five and eight years). He studied theology in Paris, and 
there wrote a Latin discourse for the rector Nicolas Cop, which 
expressed approval of the doctrine of justification by faith. 
This created a great scandal. Calvin, obliged to fiee, led the 
life of a fugitive for almost two years. During this time he 
visited the court of Queen Marguerite of Navarre where many 
dissenters took refuge, among them : Marot, Roussel, and Bona- 
venture Desperiers. In 1534, Calvin embraced Protestantism 
and a year later he finished his famous Institution of the 
Christian Religion, a Summa theologiae designed to fix the new 
doctrine, and to prevent Protestantism from becoming free 
thought. It is a code in which all is foreseen, all is defined, 
all is as narrowly confined as possible, and all reduced to one 
sole and central idea. That idea is that God is all, and 
man is nothing. Prom this postulate, with its consequences 
and conclusions, Calvin deduced Protestantism as he under- 
stood it. All his theology, all his arguments, all his morality, 
rest on that foundation. It was a profession of faith and a 
manifesto with a celebrated preface addressed to Francis I. 
It established the French Reformation, but Calvin was once 
more obliged to leave the country. The following year he was 
called to Geneva to teach theology. Farel, from Dauphine, 1 
convinced of Calvin's ability, persuaded him to accept the 

1 Farel, born near Gap, in Dauphine", in 1489, was a noted French re- 
former and itinerant preacher in Switzerland. In 1530 he introduced the 
Reformation into Neuchatel, and settled in Geneva in 1532. In spite of a 
bitter and protracted opposition, he brought about the establishment of 
the Reform Movement by the Genevan Great Council on August 27, 
1535. The lords of the province of Dauphine" bore three dolphins on their 
crest, hence the name. Humbert II, Dauphin de Viennois, ceded the 
Dauphine" to Philip of Valois on condition that the eldest son of the kings 
of France should be called the Dauphin. Apropos of heirs apparent, it is 
interesting to note the origin of the title of Prince of Wales: The land of 
Wales never wanted to submit to England, which made all efforts to over- 
come the antipathy of the province. At last, the people of Wales declared 
that if a chief were given to them who did not speak a word of English, 
and had never committed an evil action, they would accept him. Accord- 
ingly, when a son was born to the King of England, the infant, who ob- 
viously fulfilled these requisites, was declared to be the chief of the Welsh 
clans. Since that time the oldest son, heir presumptive, of the kings of 
England, has borne the title of Prince of Wales. 

Ill 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

mission to reform the city. Once pledged to the task, Calvin 
gave himself to it entirely. He exercised an absolute author- 
ity : he reorganized the whole government giving it a political 
constitution ; he imposed his confession of faith and his inter- 
pretation of it; the family and their habits were regulated 
by law even as to their mode of dressing and the table ex- 
penditures. At the end of eighteen months the city, exas- 
perated by his pious tyranny, drove him away ; two years later 
it recalled him. Calvin returned, took his place again in no- 
wise changed. He persecuted the hardened ones in the name 
of the law, in the name of the gospel; he had them judged, 
sentenced, executed, without hesitation, without compunction. 
He believed that he alone knew the truth, possessing the 
absolute right to repress and punish error. One of the victims 
of his intolerance was Michel Servet, or Servetus, 1 who was 
burned at the stake. Calvin used, as matter for his con- 
demnation, friendly controversy of theological questions on 
which they differed. Another victim was Jacques Gruet who 
was decapitated. During twenty-four years — from Septem- 
ber, 1541, till the day when it was written on the registers of 
the city: " May 27, 1564, Jean Calvin has departed to God " 
— he exercised an absolute sway. His power to keep enforced 
a growing body of ecclesiastical ordinances made Geneva the 
citadel of Protestantism. The exiles of all countries flocked 
there, especially the French; but all had to bend before the 
law of the reformer. 

At the age of thirty-one Calvin married: this was, as it 
were, a necessity for every chief of the reformers — the pledge 
of a definite rupture with the Roman Church. (Erasmus says 
on this subject: " With them it ends, as in a comedy, with 
marriage.") Calvin had to yield to the solicitations of his 

1 Michael Servetus, born in Spain in 1511, was a controversialist and a 
physician. He published at Hagenau, in 1531, an essay directed against 
the doctrine of the Trinity, entitled De Trinitatis erroribus, which attracted 
great attention'. Afterwards he studied theology at Louvain. In 1553 
he published Christianismi Restitutio, which caused him to be arrested by 
order of the inquisitor-general at Lyons. He made his escape, but he was 
apprehended at the instance of Calvin at Geneva, on his way to Naples, 
and was burned after a trial for heresy which lasted from August 14 to 
October 26, 1553. 

112 



THE RENAISSANCE 

friends, and he resigned himself to matrimony. He married 
Idelette de Bure, the widow of an Anabaptist whom he had 
converted. 

Calvin, notes Paul Albert, worked with a somber, collected, 
indefatigable energy. Among his contemporaries there were 
men like Ulrich von Hutten, Dolet, Rabelais, who greeted 
the returning light with transports of joy; who were, so to 
speak, intoxicated with the sight of all the treasures which 
antiquity brought, and plunged into it headlong. Calvin, on 
his part, remained master of his science ; he dominated it, he 
assigned to it a determined purpose. It was for him a means, 
not an end. In founding the Church of Geneva, he founded 
at the same time the school and the academy, and thus set 
an example which has become a law. This was one of the 
most powerful means of action in Protestantism, and in the 
procedure which Calvin adopted, science is necessary, but it 
must be subordinated to faith. The Christian must be in a 
position to read and interpret the sacred books; but he is 
forbidden to find in them anything save what Calvin finds 
in them. Calvin's personal taste would lead him to write 
in Latin ; but to spread his writings among the masses he em- 
ployed the French language — the language of his commen- 
taries on the Scriptures of his more than three thousand 
sermons. Often he even published the same work in both 
languages; this he did notably in the case of his Christian 
Institution — his life work. It is divided into four books, 
the general titles of which are: Of the Knowledge of God; 
Of God the Redeemer; Of the Means of Participating in 
the Grace of Christ; Of the Exterior Means of Aid to 
Salvation (by which he understood the church, the sacra- 
ments, the polity). The basis on which Calvin established 
his whole doctrine is the principle of justification founded 
not upon works, but on the grace of God through the blood 
of Christ. 1 This is the point of departure and the end. All 

1 It is the doctrine that men are saved by the blood of Christ: their 
works avail them nothing. Christ died for them, and He alone can save 
them. The Catholic believes that he can save himself: he is commanded 
to do good to redeem his sins. But the Catholic is also asked to implore 
the divine grace, and to follow the injunction of Christ: "Ask, and ye shall 
receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." 
9 113 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

religion, since creation, is reviewed, explained, demonstrated 
from this point of view. There is no deviation or halting; 
but a steadfast, regular progress, an imposing gradation, a 
powerful and simple concentration. Calvin commands re- 
spect, not sympathy. His is an energetic, profound soul, a 
strong intelligence, a mind with a limited horizon. Fanatics 
are all such, and Calvin is one of the most perfect types of 
fanaticism. His admirers would discover under this rigidity 
a depth of feeling — even a tender and compassionate heart. 
This is an illusion : he was hard and dry, and he walked with 
a high authority. The style is like the man — rigid, firm, with- 
out abandon, without illumination. " Ce style si triste," as 
Bossuet called it. This eloquence so grave and so rigorous 
brought about the divorce of the Renaissance and the Ref- 
ormation. 

Although the Renaissance and the Reformation — two 
widely different movements — were united against a common 
cause — the traditions of the Middle Ages — the Renaissance 
triumphed and the Reformation suffered defeat. Catholicism 
was almost unconquerable in France. Its history was amalga- 
mated with the most ancient national French traditions. 
Clovis had become master of Gaul only by virtue of the sup- 
port of the orthodox bishops; he had been consecrated at 
Reims, and the consecration was, so to speak, the very con- 
dition of royal authority. 1 Since the eighth century, the 

1 After the battle of Tolbiac, Clovis and three thousand of his soldiers 
were baptized. The legend says that during the commotion of Clovis's 
baptism, the clerk charged to bring the holy oil to anoint the royal head 
found himself separated from the suite by the multitude and could not 
approach the sacred font. The moment of christening had come. Hav- 
ing blessed the baptismal water, the archbishop (Remi) called for the oil 
with which to mix it, but in vain. Then he began to pray, his eyes and 
hands uplifted to heaven. A deep anxiety oppressed the spectators. 
Suddenly a dove with snowy plumage fluttered in the air, and hov- 
ered over the prelate, holding in its beak a little vial containing the 
holy oil. The bishop then administered the sacrament of baptism, say- 
ing: "King, by v the grace of God thou art the anointed of the Lord; in- 
stituted by His representative on earth. The throne is supported by the 
altar." All the French kings were crowned at Reims. Henry III said 
while placing the crown on his head, "It pricks me"; Louis XVI, "It is 
in my way" (elle me gene). The Ampulia (holy vial) is preserved in the 
Cathedral of Reims. 

114 



THE RENAISSANCE 

alliance of the church and the Carlovingian kings was pledged, 
and this is the foundation of the temporal power x of the 
popes. Pepin the Short having been anointed king by Pope 
Stephen II, assisted him against Aistulf, King of the Lom- 
bards, and gave to the Pope the exarchate of Ravenna and 
the Pentapolis. Thus he laid the foundation of the Papal 
States. Charlemagne confirmed this alliance and upheld 
Christendom against the Saracens. The Crusades originated 
in France. All during the Middle Ages the authority of the 
Holy See was never attacked. Political influence which 
brought about the controversies between Philip IV and Boni- 
face VIII, and later the Great Schism 2 in no way changed 
the submission of the people to the church. The monastic 
orders, 3 powerful organizations placed their wealth and their 
soldiers at the disposition of the sovereigns, their banners 
waved beside the royal oriflamme. The Catholic Church had 

1 Christ said to St. Peter: "Thou art the rock, and on this rock I will 
build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Christ 
said also to St. Peter: "Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be 
loosed in heaven; whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be bound in 
heaven." It is on this authority that Catholics base confession and ab- 
solution. The church had to struggle against the temporal power of its 
adversaries, and so it seemed necessary that it should have not only 
spiritual authority but also temporal forces at its disposal. This is the 
origin of the temporal power of the popes, and Catholicism's justification 
for it. 

2 There were two Great Schisms or dissentions. One existed in the 
Catholic Church from 1378-1417, when there were several popes at 
the same time in Avignon and in Rome. The Council of Constance and 
the election of Martin V put an end to it. The other Schism was between 
the Latin and Greek churches and began in the ninth century owing to 
some doctrinal difficulty and ended in a final division in 1054 between 
Pope Leo IX and the Patriarch Michael Cerularius. 

* Originating as far back as St. Martin, Apostle of the Gauls, founder of 
the first convent at Marmoutier, an abbey in Touraine. In 372 a.d., St. 
Martin, desirous of securing for himself a retreat outside of the city, had 
a monastery built two miles distant. At first there were only a few 
wooden cells, but his disciples increased rapidly. The original name was 
Ma jus Monasterium, corrupted into Marmoutier. In 853 this monastery 
was destroyed by the Normans, but the Count of Touraine had it rebuilt. 
It is said to have been the first convent in Western France, and a more 
important one than that which St. Martin had built at Liguge* in Poitou. 
Owing to the recent anti-Catholic laws in France it is now abandoned. 

115 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

always been in complete possession of the arts and sciences 
and its highest authority in matters of religion, after the Pope 
and the Councils, 1 was invested in the University of Paris and 
in the Sorbonne. 

During a period of one thousand years, writes a French 
critic, one can discover only now and then — as in the Roman 
de la Rose, in the Renart, in the fabliaux — some witty attacks 
on the churchmen, especially the monks. But the Gallic 
fervor which exercised itself at their expense never attacked 
the institution itself; the church seemed excellent, useful, in 
spite of the abuses of individual members. Finally, Catholi- 
cism in France was an edifice imposing in its massiveness and 
duration — an object of universal veneration, and apparently 
indestructible. 

The Reformation therefore did not affect the faith of the 
great majority in France, but created the Counter-Reforma- 
tion; Henry IV in order to secure his royal position was 
forced to embrace the Catholic faith. 

1 The Councils are assemblies of prelates who decide the more important 
questions concerning the church. 



CHAPTER IX 

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WRITERS 

Within ten years the three books which were " the very 
soul of the century ' ' were written : the Pantagruel of 
Rabelais, the Christian Institution of Calvin, and the Spiritual 
Exercises of Loyola. Each work was symbolical of the thought 
underlying its great question: the Renaissance, the Reforma- 
tion, and Catholicism in France. 

Ignace de Loyola (Inigo Lopez de Recalde), born in the 
castle of Loyola in Biscaya in 1491, was page at the court 
of Ferdinand V of Spain. In 1521, at the siege of Pampeluna, 
he was wounded in the leg by a cannon ball ; the wound was 
indifferently treated, and he became lame. Loyola was the 
handsomest man of his day, and his mother, doubting his 
patience under this affliction, turned his thoughts to piety. 
During his convalescence a life of the Saints was placed in 
his hands, and, reading it, he was led to devote himself to 
God. He distributed his possessions among the poor. After 
consecrating his life to the Virgin Mary in the sanctuary at 
Montserrat, he went to live in a cave and subjected himself 
to all sorts of hardship. Upon his return from a pilgrimage 
to the Holy Land, he studied in the college of Montaigne. 
In 1534, he went to Paris and founded a society with six 
disciples: Pierre Lefevre, Xaver, Rodriguez, Laynez, Boba- 
dilla, and Salmeron, who met in a subterranean chapel of the 
church of Notre-Dame de Montmartre. These men devoted 
their lives to the conversion of infidels, and to the redemption 
of the fallen. Besides the vows of chastity, of poverty and 
obedience, they swore absolute submission to the Pope. In 
1540 this order was confirmed by Pope Paul III, who gave 
to Loyola the Church of Jesus and named the order Clercs 
reguliers de la compagnie de Jesus, afterwards called Jesuits. 

117 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

They carried the Gospel to China, to the Indies, to America. 
The organization had a military character, and Loyola was 
elected general; nevertheless, he did not hesitate to perform 
most menial duties, and even the enemies of Loyola recognized 
his nobility, piety, and disinterestedness. He was canonized 
in 1622 by Gregory XV. 

Rabelais, Amyot, and Montaigne stand foremost among 
the creators of the beautiful language of the sixteenth century, 
in whose learned school it became pure and wondrously en- 
riched. A French critic says, in Rabelais, Amyot, and 
Montaigne, classic antiquity is brought into perfect union 
with the budding genius of the French race. In their 
language are mingled savory expressions of the vernacular 
and words borrowed from the Latin and Greek, forming a 
vehicle for the new ideas and sensations of the times. Ra- 
belais reflects the soul of the people, powerful and trivial; 
Amyot those of the cultivated bourgeoisie; Montaigne of the 
gentleman of letters. In these three great writers the sap of 
the race rises, circulates with force and bursts forth into a 
youthful and vigorous style, full of contrast, where ideas 
crowd and press for expression, alive with novelty. 

The same spirit which animated these great writers, 
penetrated all the arts and marked them with a profound 
imprint : music with Goudimel ; 1 eloquence with Calvin and 
de Beze; erudition with Henry Estienne; natural sciences 
with Palissy and Olivier de Serres; 2 poetry with d'Aubigne 
and Du Bartas, memoires and pamphlets with Montluc, 3 the 
Gascon captain, who in the leisure which, to his great regret, 
his age and infirmities left him, retraced with the fire of 
youth his exploits and his thousand adventures. With the 



1 Teacher of Palestrina, "prince of music." 

2 Palissy was the creator of ceramics in France. De Serres introduced 
the cultivation of the mulberry tree. 

3 Getting into a quarrel with a passer-by, Montluc told him, furiously: "I 
will give you, scoundrel, such a blow with my fist that I shall hurl you into 
this wall, leaving only your right arm free to salute me, if perchance I 
honor you by passing here again." He was a noted French marshal. 
In the latter years of his life he dictated from memory his account of the 
wars from 1521 to 1574. Henry IV paid it a just tribute in calling it La 
Bible du Soldat. 

118 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WRITERS 

audacious courtier Brantome, 1 who delighted in telling the 
infamies of his century — to which he was proud of belonging 
— L 'Hospital, Sully, 2 de Thou, Pasquier, and the authors of 
the Satire Menippee, were those magistrates and men of letters 
who, by their serious writings, or their satirical pamphlets 
protested against the follies of their contemporaries, and 
smoothed the road for the generations to come. 

The most passionate and powerful interpreter of the spirit 
of the Renaissance was Rabelais. According to F. Brunetiere, 
he was the living incarnation of the supreme idea of the 
Renaissance: that of the goodness or the divinity of nature. 
Francois Rabelais was born at Chinon in Touraine (between 
1485 and 1500; died about 1553). At an early age he entered 
the Franciscan order. He studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, 
German, Italian, Arabic, and the natural sciences, in spite 
of the interdiction of his superiors, and was therefore im- 
prisoned. Protected by Geoffroy Maillezais, he obtained his 
pardon and entered the order of the Benedictines. He left 
this order, too, and studied medicine in the University of 
Montpellier. In 1532 he received the position of doctor at 
the hospital in Lyons. He was obliged to write almanacs and 
facetious books (Pantagrueline pronostication) for a living, 
and about this time he revised an old popular novel, Les 
Grandes et estimdbles Chroniques du grand et enorme Geant 
Gargantua (The great and inestimable chronicles of the great 
and enormous Giant Gargantua) , which had an immense suc- 
cess ; shortly after he wrote a continuation to this novel calling 
it Pantagruel, the entire title being Les horribles et espouven- 
tables Faits et Prouesses du tres renomme Pantagruel Boy 
des Dipsodes, Fits du grand Geant Gargantua, composes 
nouvellement par Maistre Alcofribas Nasier. (The horrible 
and terrible deeds and prowesses of the much-renowned Pan- 
tagruel King of the Dipsodes, son of the great Giant Gargan- 

1 He served six kings, and certainly made his epoch known; for he tells 
everything, and instructs by depicting with singular truthfulness the man- 
ners, qualities, and vices of the time. His great works are Vie des hommes 
illustres et des grands capitaines and the Vies des dames galantes. 

2 It was Sully, statesman and economist, who said: "Tilling and grazing 
—these are the two breasts by which France is nourished — the true mines 
and treasures of Peru." 

119 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tua, recently composed by Master Alcofribas Nasier. 1 ) He 
was, however, recognized as the author of this book as well 
as of the former novel which had been censured by the Sor- 
bonne. To escape persecution, he went to Rome in the capac- 
ity of physician and secretary to the Cardinal du Bellay. 
In 1536 Rabelais received from Paul III a bull absolving him 
from his apostasy (his flights from the monasteries). About 
two years later he was practising medicine in Lyons, and then 
in Montpellier, where he was appointed Professor of Anat- 
omy. 2 In 1539 he was physician to William du Bellay, gov- 
ernor of Turin. 

Rabelais remodeled the chronicles entirely, and called the 
book Gargantua, which although written after Pantagruel, 
is really the First Book of Rabelais 's great work. He begins 
with a humorous prologue addressed to the " very illustrious 
drinkers," and then the story tells of the birth, childhood, 
and education of the Giant Gargantua. Then follows a veiled 
satire against royal conquests in the description of the war 
between Grandgousier, 3 the grandfather of the giant and 
King Picrochole, " the stupid, vainglorious, and headstrong 
conqueror, the crowned imbecile.' ' One of the heroes of this 
war is the monk, Jean des Entommeurs, who put to flight 
with his cross an entire troop of soldiers. He also founded 
the abbey of Thelema, the motto of which was Fais ce que 
vouldras (Do what thou wilt). 

Pantagruel, which became the Second Book in the series, 
but was really written before Gargantua, treats of the educa- 
tion of Pantagruel. The lofty passages are those which con- 
cern education and morality. Rabelais insisted that physical 
exercise should be mixed with intellectual work, that the 
studies be varied, and not too exactingly long, and above all, 
that study should have its fountain-source in nature and not in 
books. Thus Rabelais invented the object lesson long before 

1 Anagram of Francois Rabelais. 

2 In the Middle Ages, and later, dissections were performed by the bar- 
bers, who were also surgeons, the professor himself never handling a knife. 

3 Most of the characters have become types; thus Grandgousier, the 
grandfather of the giants, is the personification of the glutton; Gargantua 
has become proverbial as an insatiable eater; Pantagruel, as an Epicurean 
philosopher and a jolly companion. 

120 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WRITERS 

our modern pedagogues. In this book occurs the famous letter 
of Gargantua to Pantagruel, which has been called the Chant 
triomphal de la Renaissance (The triumphal song of Renais- 
sance). An amusing description is given of Panurge, the man 
who "if he had sixty -three ways of finding money, had also 
two hundred and fourteen ways of spending it. ' ' The character 
of Panurge, says Saintsbury, " is hardly comparable to any 
other character in literature except Falstaff. The main idea 
in Panurge is the absence of morality in the wide Aristotelian 
sense, with the presence of almost all other good qualities." 

The Third Book signed by Rabelais and preceded by a 
royal privilege granted in 1545, also opens with a curious 
prologue. The story confines itself principally to conversa- 
tion, with little action. In spite of the royal privilege, this 
book was also censured by the Sorbonne, and Rabelais felt it 
prudent to take refuge in Metz where he took the position of 
physician in the hospital. After a year he returned to France, 
but with the death of Francis I, his royal protection ended 
and Rabelais was not yet in the good graces of Henry II. 
Moreover, the famous Chambre Ardent e * created for the trial 
of heretics by the Parliament of Paris, was in session and 
Rabelais, who had aroused anew the indignation of the Sor- 
bonne by his Fourth Book, fied again to Rome, where besides 
the Cardinal du Bellay's protection he enjoyed that of the 
powerful families of Guises and of Chatillon. 

The Fourth Book, published about 1548, describes the 
adventurous voyages of Pantagruel, Panurge, and Brother 
Jean, who go in search of the oracle of La Dive Bouteille 
(the Divine Bottle) visiting on the way a series of fantastic 
islands and America. In this book the incidents of the Storm 

1 A special court of justice, by which over five hundred death sentences 
were passed in two years. The name Chambre Ardente (burning-room) 
was, according to some authorities, derived from the fact that the people 
tried there were usually condemned to be burned. Other authorities say 
it was so called because the room in which the tribunal sat was illuminated 
by many burning tapers. The most celebrated of these Chambre Ardentes 
was the one in session at the Arsenal in the seventeenth century to pass 
judgment on the great trial called Affaire des poisons (poison). The 
names of many people of high rank were on the files of this case, among 
them that of Madame de Montespan, the king's favorite, which caused 
Louis XIV to put an end to this court. 

121 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

and of the Frozen Words occur, and the amusing story is 
told of Panurge 's sea voyage during which he avenges him- 
self for an insult offered him by Dindenaut, a sheep merchant. 
This merchant has a flock of sheep on board. Panurge buys 
one of these and throws it into the sea; the rest of the flock 
follow, dragging with them Dindenaut and the shepherds in 
their vain attempt to save the flock. From this story arises 
the proverbial " moutons de Panurge," satirizing the imita- 
tive extravagance of the multitude. 

The Fifth Book is of doubtful authority. It was published 
about nine years after Rabelais 's death (1553), and is a con- 
tinuation of the description of the voyages and fantastic 
islands. The travelers visit Ringing Island, the island of the 
Furred Cats, and of the Lanterns, and conducted by a Lantern 
(Learning or Study), an inhabitant of the Island of Lantern, 
they finally reach the Island of the Bottle. Here the priestess 
Bacbuc initiates them in its mysteries — " in wine is truth, 
good hope lies at the bottom of it " — which means, as ex- 
plained by the commentators, 1 that for the conquest of science 
two things are necessary: God's guidance, and the society of 
man. Panurge receives the advice of the oracle of the Holy 
Bottle which is — Trinch (Drink). 

The satirical parts of Rabelais 's books are directed against 
the aggressive policies of the monarchs, the religious hypo- 
crites, the charlatanism of physicians and against the insolence 
and ignorance of the great lords. He knew how to veil his 
formidable attacks with a torrent of inoffensive buffoonery 
and 'unintelligible allegories. No satirist ever wielded the 
weapon of sarcasm with such an audacious and fearless art. 
"With his inexhaustible fund of knowledge, his gayety, his 
bursts of laughter, he disarmed the very one whom he had 
made his butt : 

Mieulx est de ris que de larmes eserires, 
Pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme. 2 

1 The commentators of Rabelais have seen in his Grandgousier the per- 
sonification of Louis XII; in Gargantua, Francis I, and in Pantagruel, 
Henry II, and many other representations under fictitious names of con- 
temporary men and things. 

2 It is better to write of laughter than of tears, 
For laughter is the gift of man. 
122 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WRITERS 

Rabelais 's language is very rich and picturesque, his humor 
infinitely varied, and his writings show force, power of thought 
and a sense of morality. Often, however, he is rough and 
coarse, but coarseness had always been the characteristic of 
comic literature. La Bruyere says of him: where he is bad, 
he is worse than the worst, it is the charm of the canaille; 
where he is good he is exquisite. 

The following legend is explanatory of the famous phrase 
— quart d'heure de Rabelais 1 — denoting anxious moments: 
Rabelais stopped at an inn in Lyons, and, after feasting 
for several days, found himself, as was often the case, 
without a sou to pay his bill, and no means of returning to 
Paris, where he had a most important engagement. His 
dilemma was great, and for some moments (the " quarter of 
an hour ") he was in despair, when suddenly he bethought 
himself of a plan. He placed two packages on the table in his 
room, labeled " poison for the king," " poison for the 
dauphin." The packages were soon discovered and Rabelais 
was arrested and dispatched to Paris, where he was brought 
before Francis I, to whom he explained the joke he had played 
on the innkeper and gave the proof of it by swallowing the 
supposed poison. At which the king laughed most heartily. 

No great writer is read so little, and no character in litera- 
ture has been so distorted by legends 2 as Rabelais. To quote 

1 Used now in the more special sense of "the time to settle a bill," and 
especially the addition at a restaurant. H. J. Vetter in one of his paintings 
has immortalized the quart d'heure de Rabelais. 

7 " The cure* of Meudon (Rabelais was cure of Meudon, a small town near 
Paris, for not quite one year) appears to us under that illumined mask in 
which he so much resembles the little King of Yvetot." See the song of 
Benmger (May, 1813), Le Roy d' Yvetot : 
II 6tait un roi dYvetot There was a king of Yvetot, 

Peu connu dans l'histoire little known to history; went to 

Se levant tard, se couchant tot, bed early, got up late, and slept 

Dormant fort bien sans gloire, quite well without glory — crowned 

Et couronne* par Jeanneton by Jeanneton with a simple cotton 

D'un simple bonnet de eoton night-cap, so they say. 

Dit-on. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! 

Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! ah! ah! ah! ah! What a good little king was that! 

Quel bon petit roi c'6tait la! La, la. 

!•*> l a - He ate his four meals a day, 

II faisait ses quatre repas, etc. etc. 

123 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Professor Tilley in his excellent book on Rabelais : ' ' In spite, 
however, of our scanty knowledge, 1 certain facts in his life 
and character stand plainly out. We must abandon the 
legend which represents him as a gluttonous and winebibbing 
buffoon, as an unfrocked priest, as a sort of ecclesiastical 
Falstaff. We have seen what his relations were with Guil- 
laume and Jean du Bellay, two of the foremost men in the 
kingdom; we have seen how he was respected by men like 
Geoffroy d'Estissac, the Bishop of Maillezais, and the dis- 
tinguished jurist, Andre Tiraqueau, and how humanists like 
Salmon Macrin, and Dolet, and Voulte, and Jean de Boys- 
sonne, spoke in the highest terms of his learning and of 
his skill as a physician. But, perhaps, it is from the letters 
written to him during his sojourn at Turin by Guillaume 
Pellicier, Bishop of Montpellier, that we get the most con- 
vincing proof of the high regard in which he was held, not 
only by men of his own rank, but by those far above him 
in power and station, princes of the church and patrons of 
humanism. ' ' 

For further explanation Professor Tilley introduces an ex- 
tract from Hippocratis Aphorismorum Paraphrasis Poetica: 
" You will, perhaps, think the man was a buffoon and a jester, 
one who angled for dinner with witty speeches. No, he was 
no buffoon, no jester of the market place, but one who, with 
the penetration of a distinguished mind, laughed at the 
human race, its foolish wishes and credulous hopes. He passed 
his days free from material care, his sails ever filled with 
the breeze of prosperity. Nor would you find anyone more 
learned, when it pleased him to lay aside laughter for serious 
topics. ... If a great and difficult question had to be solved 
by industry and learning, you would have said that he alone 
saw into the greatest mysteries, that to him alone were re- 
vealed the secrets of nature. . . . He was familiar with all 
the learning of Greece and Rome, and like a second Democritus 
laughed at the idle fears and hopes of populace and princes, 
and at the vain cares and anxious labors of this transitory 
life." 

1 The Soci6te des Etudes Rabelaisiennes was founded in 1902 for re- 
searches of Rabelais's works. 

124 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WRITERS 

Jacques Amyot (1513-1593), very poor, very laborious, 
made himself the servant of the well-to-do scholars of the 
College de France in order to profit by the course of public 
lectures. It is said that he worked at night by the light of 
burning coal, and that every week he received a loaf of bread 
from his mother in Melun, through the boatmen on the 
Seine. By dint of privations and perseverance he learned 
Latin, Greek, philosophy, and mathematics, and then received 
the chair of Latin and Greek at the University of Bourges. 
Successively preceptor, doctor of letters, doctor of sciences, 
professor at Bourges — Francis I gave him the revenues of the 
Abbaye of Bellozane. Under the successors of Francis, he 
was named Grand Almoner of France, preceptor of the future 
king, Charles IX, and finally Bishop of Auxerre. Amyot 
said to the prince who caused the massacre of St. Bar- 
tholomew : ' ' Our Lord has invested you with a singular good- 
ness, inclined of itself to love, honor, and esteem everything 
that is virtuous. It is not true greatness to be able to do 
everything one can, but to aspire to all that one ought to do. 
The eternal law which commands princes as well as other men, 
is righteousness, truth, and justice.' ' Unfortunately, Amyot 
had not the necessary moral authority to engrave such words 
on the soul of his pupil, nor were they in accord with the 
principles of his mother, who thoroughly dominated her son. 
Amyot 's great work is the translation of all of Plutarch's 
works, but the best in that vast collection is his translation 
of the " Lives " of Plutarch — the classic that made Plutarch 
the most popular of ancient authors in France. Amyot had 
the advantage of writing in French and his work addressed 
itself to all who knew how to read. 

The first classicist in France was Michel Eyquem, seigneur 
de Montaigne, born in 1533, in the castle of Montaigne in 
Perigord. According to Sainte-Beuve he was the wisest 
Frenchman that ever lived. His father, although a nobleman, 
chose as godparents for his son people of humble rank and 
had him brought up by peasants. Montaigne himself tells 
that his father's idea was to make him hardy and frugal, and 
to bring him in contact with the class of people who would 
stretch out their arms to him rather than those who would 
turn their backs on him. Montaigne also tells that besides 

125 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

his peasant nurse he had a German tutor, Horstanus, who 
spoke only Latin to him, so that at six years of age, Montaigne 
knew nothing of French, but had acquired Latin perfectly 
without rules, without books and grammars, without beatings, 
and without tears. At six years of age he entered the college 
of Guyenne in Bordeaux. Later he studied law, and at the 
age of twenty-three was made a councilor in the Parliament 
of Bordeaux. During this time he formed his friendship for 
Etienne de La Boetie, of which he writes: " if one should ask 
me why I love him, I feel I can but express myself thus: 
because it was he ; because it was I. ' ' 

Montaigne was attached to the courts of Francis II and 
Henry III, and witnessed the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, 
the violence of the League, and all the atrocities committed 
in the name of religion — in France the Catholics were burn- 
ing the Protestants, in Geneva the Protestants were burning 
the Catholics. " Combien j'ai vu de condamnations plus 
criminelles que le crime! " (How many condemnations I have 
seen more criminal than the crimes!) wrote Montaigne; and 
at this time, when in religion, in literature, in politics, every- 
one said ' ' I know all, ' ' Montaigne took for his device, * ' What 
do I know? " (Que sais-je?) With a profound knowledge of 
human nature and with his classical acquirements he preached 
skepticism. And in Montaigne's skepticism is expressed his 
humanity — his toleration. It is the affirmation that in this 
world where relatives rule it is wrong to believe oneself the 
infallible holder of the truth. Montaigne's skepticism pro- 
claims the liberty of the conscience, and preserves human 
morality. 

After visiting Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, he with- 
drew to his castle in Perigord, and wrote a history to which 
he gave the modest title of Essais (two volumes were published 
in 1580, and the third in 1588). Without pretension he writes 
in his introduction: " C'est icy un livre de bon foy, lecteur, ,, 
and describes his work as " un parler simple et naif tel sur 
le papier qu'a la bouche." (This is a book of good faith, 
reader, a conversation simple and unpretentious on paper as 
I would talk.) And he excelled in this ability to talk — an 
art in which no people have surpassed the French. His 
Essais, which Cardinal de Perron called the breviary of well- 

126 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY WRITERS 

bred people, are a series of about one hundred and seven 
treatises in which he discusses many questions on society, 
literature, religion, friendship, politics, etc. It is a moral and 
philosophical work, the unique subject of which is Montaigne 
himself. It marks the beginning of a long epoch of classical 
French literature which influenced Voltaire, Rousseau, Mon- 
tesquieu and the Encyclopedists. Montaigne's work is the 
" first by virtue of seniority and glory of all those master- 
pieces which are part of the French genius in its striving to- 
ward the perfection of the human mind. ' ' 

From an intellectual point of view Montaigne esteems 
ignorance. " Beaucoup savoir apporte occasion de plus 
douter, ' ' x but, says Faguet, there are two kinds of ignorance : 
one elementary, which knows nothing because it does not 
know; the other, refined, elevated, which knows nothing after 
having learned everything because it has found out that to 
learn everything leads to knowing nothing. And the first 
one is the better, and the second is not bad. Hence Mon- 
taigne's famous mot: " Ignorance and incuriosity are a soft 
pillow for a well-made head. ' ' 

In his religious views Montaigne was very circumspect; 
he never attacked any doctrine. In questions of controversy, 
he confined himself to arguments, but rarely gave an opinion. 
It has been stated that he said nothing because he knew noth- 
ing on this subject, or that he doubted everything. Professor 
Dowden's 2 symbolism with reference to this phase of Mon- 
taigne's character is striking: " Perhaps his faith wavered; 
perhaps he could not really check the advance of his question- 
ing spirit at the point which seemed most convenient. The 
higher souls alone, he thought, know an assured belief. He at 
least, imperfect believer as he was, had provided, by his in- 
genious artistry, a defense of the faith unconceived by them. 
He could imagine the happier state and he would in his 
outward conduct conform to all the duties which such a state 
implies. "Was he a skeptic ? Perhaps so, at times, in the back- 
shop of his mind. But he was also a Perigourdin, a Christian, 
a Catholic, a conservative, and as such he would behave. It 

1 "The more we know, the more we are inclined to doubt." 
1 See Professor Dowden's Montaigne. 
127 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

was as if the tower of Montaigne 1 were an allegory of the 
fabric of his soul. Below was the chapel with its altar, where 
the mass might be devoutly celebrated. Up aloft was the bell 
which at the appointed hour rang its Ave Maria. Below was 
the region of spiritual faith, but the place was not quite 
habitable. Between the two was the library, where Montaigne 
spent most of his days, and most of the hours of each day. 
It was the region of moral prudence. In the library he could 
think his own thoughts, or gaze at its beams and joists and 
ponder the Sentences of a philosopher's creed; here he could 
be wise with a human wisdom, and Seneca and Plutarch — not 
the fathers of the church — were his companions. ' ' Montaigne 
died in 1592. 

1 Montaigne in one of his essays describes the tower, his favorite place 
of retreat. The first, second, and third floors were occupied by his chapel, 
library, and bedroom, respectively, with the belfry overhead. 



CHAPTER X 

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

After Villon, the first great lyric poet in France, poetry 
fell into a decadence during the period of the grands rhetori- 
queurs (great rhetoricians). They were the fashion at the 
courts of Burgundy and Brittany and until the accession of 
Francis I, at the court of France. Their works were char- 
acterized by an unsuccessful imitation of the Latin, and by a 
vain and pretentious style. Their attempt to lead the poetical 
thought of a nation into an entirely strange and artificial path 
did not succeed, and the old form of poetry triumphed. 
Poetry, however, never reached sublime heights in the six- 
teenth century in France. Of this a French critic writes: 
" Lyrical poetry was represented by Clement Marot with 
grace but with little feeling; by the passionate poets of the 
Lyonnaise School (Maurice Sceve, Louise Labe), who in their 
efforts to elevate the language by the lofty treatment of sub- 
jects lost themselves in abstraction and subtleties; by Du 
Bellay whose poems were sad and personal, and by Ronsard 
in sensual and melancholy qualities. But in general with 
Ronsard and the poets of the Renaissance, inspiration was 
suppressed by the rules of classic antiquity and poetry was 
more didactic than lyric. Malherbe, although lyric in form, 
aimed at oratory. After Malherbe, poetry was cultivated 
only by the second-rate poets, such as: Theophile, Maynard, 
Racan, the precieux (Voiture, Malleville, Sarrazin, Godeau, 
Saint- Armand, Scudery, Scarron), who introduced into their 
poems more fine wit than they did feeling. And it was 
only in the Fables of La Fontaine and in the songs and 
choruses of Racine that lyric poetry reached again true 
beauty. " 

Clement Marot, " the poet of princes/' was born in 1497 
10 129 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

at Cahors. Through the influence of his father, the poet 
Jean Marot, Clement was early introduced to court life. He 
became attached to the court of Marguerite de Valois, Queen 
of Navarre, and later to that of Francis I. He followed that 
monarch on his expeditions, and almost all the important 
events of his reign are sung by Marot. Marot was constantly 
persecuted by the Sorbonne and being accused of heresy, he 
was imprisoned at various times, owing his deliverance to 
the intervention of Marguerite and the king. Some histo- 
rians say that upon an accusation of his mistress : ' ' Prenz-le, 
(take him,) il a mange le lard," 1 he was arrested by order of 
the inquisitor and imprisoned in the Chatelet. In his distress, 
Marot wrote Lyon Jamet a letter in which, making a funny 
and very piquant application of the fable of the Lion and the 
Mouse, he besought him to effect his liberation. Through 
Jamet 's influence, Charles Guiart, Bishop of Chartres, who 
was secretly favorable to the reformers, issued in 1526 a decree 
of arrest against Marot, as if the poet had not already felt 
the hand of justice. This mandate was executed, and Marot, 
given over to the officers of the bishop, was transferred to 
Chartres, where the hostelry of the Eagle was assigned to 
him for a prison. Here he was visited and feasted by all 
the influential people of the city. This inspired the pris- 
oner to write his celebrated Enfer (Hell) — a virulent satire 
aimed against the administrators of the law and a work 
by which he incurred the displeasure of Diane de Poitiers, 2 
mistress of Francis I, whom he boldly reproached for her 
unbelief. 

1 Not translatable; il a mange le lard was a figurative mode of speech em- 
ployed to express in general "to be guilty." The phrase Prenz-le, il a 
mange le lard, Marot uses in one of his ballads. Manger du lard is a slang 
expression meaning "to betray one's accomplices." 

2 Diana of Poitiers, Duchess of Valentinois, and first lady of honor to 
Queen Claude, was richly endowed by nature in mind and in body. Her 
father, Jean de Poitiers, Count of St. Vallier, was condemned to be be- 
headed; but Diana threw herself at the feet of Francis I, and by her tears 
and her charms obtained his pardon. But her father's hair grew white in 
a single night in the prison at Loches, and fear threw him into a violent 
fever from which he never recovered. Hence the expression "fever of St. 
Vallier." Diana was at least forty years old when King Henry II, barely 
eighteen, fell desperately in love, with her; and although almost sixty years 

130 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

In 1534, Marot was implicated in the Affaire des placards, 
when all the principal streets of Paris were placarded with 
printed sheets attacking the Roman Catholic Church in the 
most offensive terms. Marot was obliged to leave Paris, and 
found refuge at the court of Margaret of Navarre and, dur- 
ing a later period, at the court of Renee de Prance, sister 
of Louis XI. 

In 1536 he dedicated to Francis I his translation of the 
first thirty Psalms. The dedication ran : 

Mais tout ainsi qu'avecques diligence 
Sont eclaircis par bons esprits rusez 
Les escritaux des vieux fragmens usez, 
Ainsi, 6 roi, par les divins esprits 
Qui ont sous toy Hebrieu langage appris, 
Nous sont jettez les pseaumes en lumiere, 
Clairs, et au sens de la forme premiere, 
Dont apres eux, si peu que faire scay, 
T'en ay traduit, par maniere d'escay 
Trente, sans plus, en ton noble langage, 
Te suppliant les recevoir pour gage, 
Du residu qui ja t'est consacre, 
Si les voir tous il te venoit a gre. 1 

old at the death of the king, she had always held the same sway over his 
heart. Her charms and beauty withstood the ravages of time; every man 
at all distinguished in letters could count upon her protection. The reign 
of Henry II was that of Diana; but no sooner was that prince in extremis 
than the courtiers who had so long worshiped at her shrine turned their 
backs upon her. Catherine of Medici, wife of Henry II, sent orders to 
her to return the crown jewels and to retire from the beautiful castle of 
Chenonceaux to one of the less sumptuous castles. She died at the age of 
sixty-six, beautiful to the end. She is the only royal mistress in whose 
honor medals were struck. One still exists on which she is represented 
trampling Love under foot, with the words "Omnium victorem vici" (I 
have conquered the conqueror of all). 

1 But just as, with diligence, the writings of old worn fragments have 
been made clear by cunning minds; and just as, O King, the Psalms have 
been put in a clear light for us, and with their original meaning, by those 
inspired minds who learned the Hebrew tongue under you — of which writ- 
ings, after them, as well as I can, I have translated, as a sort of exper- 
iment, thirty — no more — into your noble tongue, supplicating you to 
receive them as a pledge of the remainder, which henceforth are consecra- 
ted to you, if you would see them all. 

131 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Marot's translation was received at the court with enthusiasm. 
Francis I took pleasure in humming new psalms. ' ' With this 
royal example before them, the courtiers and the ladies, even 
the least virtuous, began to learn them by heart, and, before 
they were formally set to music, to sing them to the tune of 
current, and sometimes the most profane or burlesque, melo- 
dies. ' ' In spite of royal favor, the Sorbonne continued their 
persecutions, and finally prohibited the sale of this translation. 
Marot sought refuge in Geneva, but there, too, animosity and 
intolerance drove him away. He finally found protection in 
Turin, where he died in 1544. 

His psalms, fifty in number, were published in 1543, with 
a preface by Calvin. They were set to music by Goudimel and 
almost all of them were introduced into the song books of 
the Calvinists. Their composition is like that of Marot's 
songs and epitaphs, strained and pedantic. His best works 
are his epitres, rondeaux, and ballades, some of which are 
marvels of grace and wit and rhythmic harmonies. The 
word Marotisme, indicative of Marot 's style, was used to desig- 
nate a genre of poetry, of facile wit and melodious rhyme, 
without much depth or passion. This style with its archaic 
coloring, placed Marot as the last of the poets of the Middle 
Ages, and a modern poetry, artistic and erudite, was created 
by the Pleiade. 

The impulse to this new school of poetry was given by 
a class of young scholars, nourished under the strong disci- 
pline of classical studies. Their master was Jean Dorat and 
one of their number — Ronsard — became the chief of the new 
school, and formed, with Joachim du Bellay, Remi Bellau, 
Jodelle, Dorat, Bai'f, and Pontus de Thiard, the French 
Pleiade. 1 The pupils of Dorat " having drunk at their 
leisure the strong wine of the ancient poets " learned to 
admire the elevation of their language and the nobility of 
their ideas. In 1549, Du Bellay published his Defense et 

1 Under Henri III. There was another French Pleiade under Louis 
XIII, composed of Rapin, Commire, Larue, Manage, Santeul, Duperrier, 
and Petit. The name Pleiade, an astral term taken possession of by 
poetry, was given to seven poets who lived in the reign of Ptolemy Phila- 
delphus: Lycophron, Theocritus, Aratus, Nicander, Appolonius, Homer, 
and Callimachus. 

132 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

Illustration de la Langue Frangaise, a manifesto of the new 
school and their programme. It furnishes the historic date of 
that literary movement which was prolonged during almost 
half a century, with Ronsard as its chief. The intention of 
Du Bellay was, not only to defend the common language 
against the contempt of the scholars, but to show that it 
might acquire the qualities in which it was still lacking, and 
by what means one might hope to elevate it to the level of 
Greek and Latin. He wished to enrich the French language 
by imitating the ancient Greek and Latin writers, and taking 
freely from the " sacred treasures of the Delphic temple/ ' 
' The Romans/' he says, " imitated the best Greek authors 
— transforming themselves into them, devouring them, and, 
after having devoured them, changing them into their own 
blood and nourishment." The new school, then, aban- 
doned rondeaux, ballades, and virelais, for the cultiva- 
tion of the new genres of poetry: odes, elegies, idylls, and 
sonnets. 

Du Bellay (1525-60) is known as the most modern of 
poets of the sixteenth century. His poems show grace, emo- 
tion, and creative ability. The pastoral poem Vanneur de 
BIS aux Tents (Winnower addressing the Winds) is quoted 
as a model of grace and poetic ease: 

A vous troupe legere, 
Qui d'aile passagere 
Par le monde volez, 
Et d'un sifflant murmure 
L'ombrageuse verdure 
Doucement esbranlez : 

J'offre ces violettes 
Ces lis et ces fleurettes 
Et ces roses icy; 
Ces vermeillettes roses 
Tout freschement escloses, 
Et ces ceillets aussi. 

De vostre doulce haleine 
Esventez cette plaine, 
Esventez ce sejour; 
133 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

Ce pendant que j'ahanne 
A mon ble que je vanne 
A la chaleur du jour. 1 

Pierre de Ronsard was born in 1524 in the Castle of Pos- 
sonniere, near Vendome. His childhood and early youth 
were singularly active. Disgusted with school at nine years 
of age, he became a page at court, and passed about three 
years in Scotland, in the service of King James. He visited 
Flanders and Germany, and, at the age of nineteen returned 
to France, where a brilliant career awaited him. But he 
suddenly lost his sense of hearing which compelled him to 
give up court life and led him to devote himself to literature. 
Shipwrecks, wars, gallant adventures, knowledge of men and 
languages — these things he gained on his travels, and turned 
them to account as a poet. Proclaimed in the Jeux Floraux, 2 
11 prince of poets," Ronsard also became the poet of princes. 

1 To you, troop so fleet, Lily and violet 

That with winged wandering feet I give, and blossoms wet, 

Through the wide world pass Roses and dew; 

And with soft murmuring This branch of blushing roses, 

Toss the green shades of spring Whose fresh bud uncloses, 

In woods and grass. Wind-flowers, too. 

Ah, winnow with sweet breath, 
Winnow the holt and heath, 

Round this retreat; 
Where all the golden morn 
We fan the gold o' the corn 
In the sun's heat. 

— Translation by Andrew Lang. 

2 The Floral Plays {Jeux Floraux), an academy of Toulouse, was 
founded in 1323 by seven troubadours of Toulouse, under the name of 
Tres gate Compagnie des sept troubadours de Toulouse. Every year 
on the first of May a poetical contest takes place in Toulouse, and this 
academy distributes prizes for the best poems: the first prize a golden 
violet, the second a silver eglantine, and the third a marigold in metal, 
hence the name Floral Plays. Clemence Isaure, born in Toulouse, was 
noted for her mental gifts and for her patronage of young poets. She 
gave this instituti6n a new impetus by providing an annual fund. After 
her death her statue was erected at the city hall and wreathed with 
flowers during the contests. The Jeux Floraux were reorganized at the 
end of the seventeenth century, and raised to the dignity of an academy, 
after which only French aspirants were admitted. It was suppressed in 
1790, but reestablished in 1806, and is the oldest literary society in Europe. 

134 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

Queen Elizabeth gave him a diamond of great value, and 
Mary Stuart sent him a rock of solid silver, with the inscrip- 
tion " a Ronsard, PApollon de la source des Muses." She 
received him during the brief reign of her husband, Francis 

II. Four kings, Henri II, Francis II, Charles IX, and Henri 

III, showered upon him favors and distinctions. 

Ronsard was the founder of modern French poetry. He 
introduced for the first time the idea that form and style 
were necessary in the composition of verses. He was, above 
all, an admirable artist, and the aim he never lost sight of in 
his poetry and which, in the estimate of his contemporaries 
he achieved so well, was nobility, earnestness, and splendor 
of language. A large vocabulary did not exist in French, 
and Ronsard set to work to increase it. He created new words 
and rejuvenated old ones (archaisms), he tried to form a 
language for poetry — richer and more elevated than that 
used for prose. Some critics say he would have been a great 
poet, if not epic or lyric, at any rate elegiac, but for his great 
fault — his determination to suppress his personal inventive 
power under a balderdash of imitations. He encumbered the 
French language with Latin and Greek expressions, not com- 
prehensible, as he himself writes, to the majority of the people : 

Les Francais qui mes vers liront, 
S'ils ne sont et Grecs et Romains, 

En lieu de ce livre ils n'auront 

Qu'un pesant faix entre les mains. 1 

Nyrop in his defense, writes that Ronsard did not borrow 
more words from the ancient languages than any of the other 
writers of his time, and that Boileau was in error when he 
represented Ronsard 's muse speaking Greek and Latin; he 
should have said, continues Nyrop, " that his muse spoke 
French, and thought in Greek and Latin.' ' 

Ronsard 's attempt to write an epic poem, the Franciade, 
was a failure. He used an improbable legend for the subject 

1 Frenchmen who will my verses read, 
Unless they be Greek and Roman (scholars), 
Instead of this book will have 
But a heavy load in their hands. 
135 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

matter, and imitated Virgil and Homer. It speaks of Francus, 
the son of Hector, who escapes from the fury of the Greeks 
and after a series of adventures arrives at Crete. The two 
daughters of the King of Crete fall in love with him. One 
of them, desperate with jealousy, throws herself into the sea; 
the other, a prophetess, discloses the future to Francus, in 
which he appears as the ancestor of a long line of kings in 
France, from the legendary Pharamond x to Charlemagne. 
The poem lacks inspiration, and Ronsard, who intended to 
write twelve cantos, stopped after the fourth. Ronsard 's 
success lay in his odes, sonnets, and hymns. The following 
graceful " Ode," addressed to Cassandra, is expressive of his 
lighter manner: 

Mignonne, allons voir si la Rose, 
Qui ce matin avait desclose 

Sa robe de pourpre au soleil, 
A point perdu cette vespree, 
Les plis de sa robe pourpree, 

Et son teint au vostre pareil. 

Las! voyez comme en peu d'espace, 
Mignonne, elle a dessus la place, 

Las, las, ses beautez laisse cheoir! 
O vraiment maratre Nature, 
Puisqu'une telle fleur ne dure 

Que du matin jusques au soir. 

Done, si vous me croyez, Mignonne, 
Tandis que votre age fleuronne 

En sa plus verte nouveaute, 
Cueillez, cueillez votre jeunesse; 
Comme a cette fleur, la vieillesse 

Fera ternir votre beaute. 2 

1 Frankish chieftain of the fifth century who, according to legend, was 
the first king of the Merovingian line; at all events the first Frankish 
king whose name — and nothing else — history has preserved. 
2 Come, darling, see an' if the rose, 
Which did to the sun's dawn disclose 

Its purple robe all freshly blown, 
Has not at hour of Vespers lost 
Its painted dress, its beauty's boast, 
And its complexion like your own. 
136 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

Ronsard, the hero of literary reform, had many followers, 
and he knew, by the force of his convictions, how to hold sway 
over prose and poetry which, for fifty years, did not tolerate 
either adversaries or rivals. But now the great Ronsard 
V lies buried under his laurels." He died in 1585. 

While Ronsard still remained supreme in poetry, and Des- 
portes (1546-1606) and Bertaut (1552-1611) of the second 
generation of the Pleiade were reigning favorites, two poets 
of entirely different genius appeared on the literary horizon. 
The one revived the old caustic French spirit in all its 
frankness : 

Otez votre chapeau. C'est Mathurin Regnier, 
De Fimmortel Moliere immortel devancier. 1 

Mathurin Regnier 's (1573-1613) only claim to celebrity are 
his satires. He wrote his own epitaph, which is still celebrated : 

J'ai vecu sans nul pensement, 
Me laissant aller doucement, 

A la bonne loi naturelle; 
Et ne saurai dire pourquoi 
La mort daigna songer a moi 

Qui n'ai daigne songer en elle. 2 

Behold! alas! in how brief space, 
Darling, it has upon the place 

Let all its beauties pale and fade. 
Stern stepdame Nature, we must chide, 
Since such a flower may only bide 

From morning until even shade. 

Then, if you trust me, darling, while 
Your tender age doth bloom and smile 

In its new, fresh, unsullied dress, 
Gather, oh, gather now, your youth, 
Since (as this flower) age, void of ruth, 
Will tarnish all your loveliness. 

— Translation by Carrington. 
1 (de Musset.) Off with your hat! 'Tis Mathurin Regnier — immortal 
Moliere's immortal predecessor. 

2 1 have lived without thought, letting myself go gently along according 
to the good natural law; and I cannot say why Death has deigned to think 
of me who have never deigned to think of her. 

137 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The other poet, Francois de Malherbe, exhibited the dis- 
ciplined classical mind. He was born at Caen, in 1555, and 
was educated in Paris, Bale, and Heidelberg. His odes to 
Henry IV, Marie de Medici, and to Du Perier, brought him 
popularity, and he became court poet. His ode to Du Perier, 
on the death of Du Perier 's daughter Rose, reads : 

Ta douleur Du Perier, sera done eternelle? 



Mais elle etait du monde ou les plus belles choses 

Ont le pire destin, 
Et rose, elle a vecu ce que vivent les roses : 

L'espace d'un matin. 1 

But Malherbe 's fame rests not on his poems, but as the initi- 
ator of the movement for purity in the French language. 
As critic, grammarian, and " philological legislator," he 
wielded an immense power, and became the " regent of 
Parnassus." He perfected versification; he proscribed the 
hiatus and the enjambement, 2 and reduced to a small number 
the rhythmical forms of French poetry. By the clearness of 
his mind and the severity of his criticism, he freed poetry 
from Greek and Latin " ruins," which since Du Bellay and 
the Pleiade had encumbered the language. He condemned 
the use of archaisms, diminutives, and provincialisms. He dif- 
ferentiated words, classed them, and rigorously regulated 
their use. Rhetoric was made purer, and the forms of style 
clearer for literature. He freed the language from its Gas- 
conisms. 3 He devoted his whole life to the reform of the 
language, and pursued his enterprise with scrupulous care, 
and with the persistent strength of good sense, and finally 
imposed upon the French tongue a strict discipline. French, 
in its perfected form, became the language of all the courts 

1 Will thy sorrow, then, Du Perier, be everlasting? 



But she was of the world where the most beautiful things 

Have the worst fate, 
And a rose, she lived as long as roses live — 
The space of a morn. 
2 The completing the sense in the next line for formal metrical effect. 
3 Degasconna, said Balzac; i. e., cleared the French language of its 
Gascon expressions. 

138 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

and literary circles of Europe. Malherbe was surnamed the 
"tyrant 1 of words and syllables," and established those 
severe precepts to which, thereafter, the talented French poets 
subjected their powers. 

Malherbe, if severe toward others, was no less so to him- 
self. He was an indefatigable worker, polishing and repolish- 
ing his phrases. It is said, that on one occasion, a friend 
of his having lost his wife, Malherbe wished to address his 
consolations. When he had finally finished his verses, he 
found his friend not only consoled, but remarried. During 
twenty -five of his busiest years, he wrote on an average, thirty- 
three verses a year. " When one asked his opinion/ ' says 
Racan, " on some French word, he would generally refer 
you to the street porters of the Hay Market, saying that they 
were his authority for the language." By this he meant 
that the language of the people was never influenced by for- 
eign forces, 2 and that the language of literature, too, should 
be pure and simple ; in other words, French. 3 

In rendering poetry more simple and rational, Malherbe 
raised its standard to perfection, but he thereby rendered 
it more difficult, and, for over a century after him, there was 
no lyric poet of France. An epigram on Malherbe, composed 
by his friend Maynard, reads : 

La faveur des princes est morte; 

Malherbe, en notre age brutal, 
Pegase est un cheval qui porte 

Les poetes a l'hopital.* 

" Grammarian-poet," says Sainte-Beuve, " his object 
above all was, like a clever artist, to restore and to string the 
instrument from which Corneille and Racine would draw 
sublime and melodious chords." Malherbe died in 1628. 

1 It is said that on his death bed, Malherbe upbraided his nurse for 
using a word incorrectly. 

2 The court had been by turns Spanish, Italian, and Gascon. 

3 Ce qui n'est pas clair, n'est pas frangais. (Rivarol.) 

9 The favor of princes is dead; 
Malherbe, in our brutal age, 
Pegasus is a horse which bears 
Poets to the almshouse. 
139 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Du Bell ay in his Defense already quoted, advised the 
coming writers to restore comedies and tragedies to their 
ancient glory. To Estienne Jodelle (1532-73), was assigned 
the role of dramatist of the Pleiade, and he introduced 
tragedy into the national literature, when, at the age of 
twenty, he wrote Cleopatra Captive, in imitation of Seneca. 
The Italian tragedies, Rucella'is's Bosmonda, and Trissino's 
Sofonisba, had been translated into French, but Jodelle 's 
tragedy is important in the history of French literature 
as the first regular French tragedy. His work is faulty, the 
plan very simple, the language negligent, and the speeches 
interminable; but it has the merit of being the first attempt 
to offer a higher form of amusement than the mysteries and 
farces. 

People awakened to the new erudition, introduced by the 
humanists, felt the want of intellectual entertainment. To 
see before them a living representation of the characters of 
antiquity — the subjects of their diligent studies — aroused in 
the savants unbounded enthusiasm. They themselves under- 
took to play the various parts. 1 The first representation took 
place at the Hotel de Reims, in 1552, then at the College of 
Boncour, before Henry II and his court. According to 
Brantome, the king presented Jodelle with five hundred 
ecus and his gracious favor. Shortly after, Jodelle produced 
another tragedy, Didon se sacrifiant. 

The impulse to tragedy having been given, there was soon 
a whole school of dramatic authors following in the footsteps 
of Jodelle. Jean de la Taille wrote Saill le Furieux, and La 
Famine ou les Gabaonites (1571) ; Antoine de Montchretien 
(1575-1621) wrote Sophonisbe, David, I'Ecossaise, and Robert 
Gamier (1535-1601), who showed in his tragedies more eleva- 
tion, harmony, and purity of language than his contemporaries, 
produced among other pieces, Les Juives, 2 his masterpiece. 

1 Jodelle as Cleopatra; Ronsard, Baif, La Peruse, etc., taking other 
parts. 

2 Funeral Chorus of Les Juives : 

Comment veut-on que maintenant 

Si desolees, 
Nous allions la fltite entonnant 

Dans ces vallees? 
140 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

All tragedies, however, were almost entirely based on an 
imitation of Seneca, and only written for court and college 
amusement, until about 1600, when Alexandre Hardy intro- 
duced them to the public. Alexandre Hardy (about 1570- 
1631), was an actor, and the dramatist of a company of play- 
ers under Valleran Lecomte, in the Hotel de Bourgogne. 
Although a mediocre writer, he helped to fix the form of 
classic tragedy, he created the plot, and strengthened the 
unity of action. Compelled to work very rapidly to supply 
the requisite number of plays, he was often obliged to fur- 
nish one at a day's notice, and once wrote a five-act tragedy 
in five days. The popularity of his plays was increased by 
the variety of sources — Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish 
literature — from which he took his material. He wrote about 
seven hundred plays, tragedies, tragi-comedies, pastorals, etc., 
which appealed to both the court circles and the people. Of 
these numerous plays, he published only forty, the best of 
which is Marianne. 

With Hardy, the modern theater found its impulse, and 
dominated the stage for thirty years, but the definite forma- 
tion of tragedy dates from Corneille. 

True French comedy also dates from the sixteenth cen- 
tury. Jodelle, Ronsard, Bai'f, translated the comedies of 
antiquity, while Jean de la Taille, Odet de Turnebe, Godard 
and many others imitated the Italian comedies. Among the 
latter writers, the greatest was Larivey, 1 an Italian, Pierre 
Giunto, who settled in France under the name of Pierre de 

Que le luth touche* de nos doigts 

Et la cithare, 
Fassent resonner de leurs voix, 

Un ciel barbare? 

Que la harpe de qui le son 

Toujours lamente, 
Assemble avec notre chanson 

Sa voix dolente? 

How it is to be expected that we, so desolate, should go forth into the 
vales with sounding flute? — that lute and zither, touched by our hands, 
should echo in a barbarous clime? — that the sound of the ever-lamenting 
harp should mingle with the doleful voice of our song? 

1 Larivey (arrive), French translation of Giunto. 

141 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

l'Arivey. His comedies are characterized by fine observation, 
originality, and force; and written in prose, an innovation at 
that time, they form an epoch in the history of the French 
theater. Les Esprits, his best comedy, furnished the material 
for several scenes of Moliere's L'Etourdi. 

Comedy altogether dominated by the Commedia delVArte 
brought by the Italians from across the Alps, became erudite 
and artificial, and it remained with the grand Corneille to 
regulate comedy as well as to create true tragedy. 

SATIRE MENIPPEE 

Satire has always been cultivated in France where it is 
in harmony with the racial characteristics. During the Mid- 
dle Ages, it played a continuous role — in fables, farces, 
moralities, soties, etc. Rabelais used it, and Du Bellay and 
Ronsard advocated its cultivation, and finally, satire became 
embodied in some important works of the sixteenth century: 
Discours sur les miseres de ce temps of Ronsard, the famous 
Satires of Regnier, the Tragiques of d'Aubigne, and the 
political pamphlet — the Satire Menippee. During the seven- 
teenth century, satire reached its culmination in Boileau's 
Art Poetique and in some of his Satires. 

The Satire Menippee is the most famous of that species 
of literature — the pamphlet — which the political chaos of the 
sixteenth century brought forth. It took its name from the 
Satira Menippea of the Roman 1 satirist Varro, who imitated 
Menippos, the pupil of Diogenes. The pamphlet was the work 
of a circle of friends : Leroy, a chaplain of the Connetable de 
Bourbon; Passerat, Durand, poets; Gillot, Pithou, Rapin, 
and Chrestien, lawyers and professors. 

These men were no Huguenots, but peaceful Catholics, 
who feared evil results for their country from the doings of 
the League, 2 and the prolongation of the civil wars, which 
might finally deliver France into Spanish hands. 

1 The Romans have claimed the invention of this genre: Satira quidem 
tota nostra est. (Quintilian.) 

2 The League was a confederation of the Catholic party, founded by 
the Duke of Guise in 1576, with the apparent purpose of defending the 
Catholic religion against the Calvinists, but in reality to overthrow Henry 

142 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

The Satire Menippee 1 was a sort of farce divided into 
two parts: La Vertu du Catholicon, and Les Affaires des 
Etats — Generaux. Tke Preface introduces two charlatans, 
who sell the Catholicon, a marvelous drug, which has the 
effect of permitting one to be a traitor and an assassin in 
the name of the Holy Church. This was symbolical of the 
religious zeal alleged by the Leaguers as an exeuse to fight 
against the king — a false zeal, intended to conceal their revo- 
lutionary spirit. " Then comes a description (in which, as 
throughout the work, actual facts are blended inextricably 
with satirical comment) of the procession of opening. To 
this succeeds a sketch of tapestries with which the hall of 
meeting was hung, all of which are, of course, allegorical, and 
deal with murders of princes, betrayal of native countries to 
foreigners, etc. Then comes ' L'Ordre tenu pour les Se- 
ances, ' in which the chief personages on the side of the League 
are enumerated in a long catalogue, every item of which 
contains some bitter allusion to the private or public conduct 
of the person named. Seven solemn speeches are then delivered 
by the Duke de Mayenne as head of the League, by the legate, 
by the Cardinal de Pelleve, by the Bishop of Lyons, by Rose, 
the fanatical rector of the University, by the Sieur de Rieux, 
as representative of the nobility, and, lastly, by a certain Mon- 
sieur d'Aubray for the Tiers-Etat. A burlesque coda con- 
cludes the volume, the joints of which are : first, a short verse 
satire on Pelleve; secondly, a collection of epigrams; and, 
thirdly, Durant's Regret Funebre a Mademoiselle ma Corn- 
mere sur le Trepas de son Ane, a delightful satire on the 
Leaguers, which did not appear in the first edition, but which 
yields to few things in the book. ' ' 2 

The clever composition, the striking satire and wit dis- 
played and its great purpose — to show that religion should not 
be made to serve politics — endeared it to all hearts. It was 

III and to place the Guises, chiefs of the League, on the French throne. 
Henry IV understood that by abjuring Calvinism he would put an end to 
the League. "Paris is indeed worth a mass," said Henry in embracing 
Catholicism and restoring peace to France. 

1 The full title is De la Vertu du Catholicon d'Espagne et de la Tenue des 
Etats de Paris. 

2 From Saintsbury's French Literature. 

143 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

not a book composed as a whole, but a veritable journal, 
published successively in detached leaves, and then combined 
as a collection. A nineteenth-century echo of this great satir- 
ical pamphlet, was the Minerve Frangaise of the Restoration, 
a semiperiodical, issued irregularly (1818-20) at a time when 
some subterfuge was necessary to evade a ruthless censorship. 

MEMOIRES 

France is considered the fatherland of the genre of litera- 
ture, known as Memoires. Chateaubriand attributes the su- 
periority of the French nation to produce the best Memoires, 
to the inclination of the French people to narrate, to their 
sociability, and to the vanity of their humor. Joinville and 
Froissart have written nothing else; under Louis XI and 
Charles VIII, Commines excelled in that genre. Under 
Francis I, the Marshal de Fleuranges set down the recital of 
his campaign with a simple vivacity. Montaigne's Essais 
are classed among the great Memoires. Jean Martin and 
Guillaume Du Bellay have written their Memoires in a simple, 
curious style. But, of the greatest importance, are perhaps 
the Memoires of the sixteenth century, which relate to the 
immediate religious and political strifes of that period — when 
France was alive with armed bands, when religious wars 
racked the country, and men killed each other with bestial 
rage. During this time, many men yielded to the impulse to 
write what they had observed, and if their works were badly 
written they had the great merit of sensible and vigorous 
simplicity and animated expression, which brought the events 
clearly before one. Among this group of warrior writers 
was the old general d'Estrees, who told in a few pages of the 
forty fortresses he had taken, and " whose great frame," 
says Brantome, " one saw mounted on a big charger holding 
himself erect at the trenches, which he overtowered by half 
his body, and remaining there, with head uplifted in the midst 
of bullets, as if he were on a hunt. ' ' 

Blaise de Lasseran-Massencome, Seigneur de Montluc ( 1502- 
77), was a captain of warlike ferocity, who turned his declin- 
ing days to account and wrote his exploits for the instruction 
of his children and the young nobility of France. His Com- 

144 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

mentaires, valuable for the history of his epoch, were written 
with the fiery * ' eloquence of the brigand, ' ' and he seemed to 
glory in the bloodshed of the numerous civil wars he lived 
through. He, however, writes: " I have all my life hated 
writing, and would pass a whole night with my armor on 
my back in preference to writing. ' ' 

Francois de La Noue, called Bras de fer (Iron Arm) , (1531- 
91), was a French captain, representative of the severe Prot- 
estant type. King Henry IV said of him, " He is a great 
warrior, but a still greater man of honor. " In his captivity, 
La Noue wrote his Discours politiques et militaires, which 
Henry IV called the soldier's Bible. It is a precious literary 
work, full of the knowledge of the times and discloses the 
writer's honesty and purity of intention. 

Guillaume de Tavannes (1509-73), one of those great 
Catholic lords leagued together to defend their faith, left 
Memoires valuable to history, but characterized by an auda- 
cious use of bad language. His brother, Jean de Tavannes, 
also a writer, but a Protestant and faithful servant of Henry 
IV, found himself many times on the same battle-field with 
his brother in opposite camps. 

To these might be added a long list of interesting Me- 
moires, such as the Historia sui temporis written in Latin by 
the Protestant de Thou; the Memoriae nostrce libri VI, of 
Paradin; the Memoires of the Due de Sully, one of France's 
greatest ministers, published under the title of Sages et royales 
economies d'Etat; of Marshal de Villeroi; and the Memoires 
of Nicolas de Catinat, Marshal of France, whose simplicity, 
fine moral character, and the great solicitude he showed for 
the welfare of his soldiers, earned for him the cognomen of 
Pere la Pensee (Father Thoughtful). This great soldier, who 
sold his estates to equip the army of the king, said: "As long 
as a drop of blood and an inch of land remain to me, I will 
employ them in the service of the country in which God 
allowed me to be born. ' ' 

Two men of great diversity of character, manners, and 
opinion were among the famous Memoire writers of the six- 
teenth century. One, Pierre de Bourdeilles, Seigneur de 
Brantome (1540-1614), better known as the abbot of Bran- 
tome, whose writings are characterized by a frivolity border- 
11 145 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ing on obscenity. His Memoires, writes a French critic, are 
a continuous and servile echo of all the rumors of the court 
and the city which— from Francis I to Henry IV — struck the 
ear of a curious and talkative courtier. No writer was ever 
more completely devoid of moral sentiment. He repeats every- 
thing without thinking of anything; a true parrot of the 
court, the more interesting as he is less profound. For he 
tries to veil nothing, and so the whole century is reflected in 
the impudent frankness of his work. The mobility of his 
mind puts him in sympathy with the events which he relates ; 
one sees him moved by Mary Stuart's misfortunes, struck by 
the austerity of old Montmorency, 1 astonished at the Roman 
grandeur of L 'Hospital, charmed with the heroism of Bayard. 
Though his style is neither brilliant nor precise, he grows 
animated in the recital of battles and debauches; he repro- 
duces very well the gossip of the courtiers and the women, 
and records with ample truth those varied impressions which, 
by turns, control him, without even inspiring him with respect 
for virtue or hatred for vice. 

Brantome's Memoires include: Vies des hommes illustres 
et grands capitaines frangais et Strangers; Vies des dames 
illustres; Vies des dames galantes (a collection of obscene 
anecdotes) ; Anecdotes de la cour de France touchant les duels; 
Rodomontades et jurements des Espagnols; etc. All these 
captains and illustrious ladies with whom Brantome had lived 
on a familiar footing, are depicted by him with a piquant 
naivete and give a true and characteristic picture of the times. 

The other man was a Gascon gentleman, caustic and boast- 
ful, audacious in love and war — Theodore Agrippa d 'Aubigne 2 
(1550-1630), Calvinistic captain, historian, and litterateur. 
It is said that at the age of eight years, when passing in the 
public square of Amboise before a number of gibbets, from 
which were suspended the heads of some of his coreligionists, 
he pledged his life to the Protestant cause. His entire writ- 
ings show a" passionate party feeling and a profound sorrow 
for the condition of his country ; they display force and wit, 

1 Wounded to death in a battle, this famous Constable de France said 
to his confessor: "Do you think that I have lived for eighty years with 
honor, not to know how to die in a quarter of an hour? " 

2 He was the grandfather of Madame de Maintenon. 

146 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

an ardent mind, and a bold valor. Whatever there was of 
ardor, of impetuosity, of giddiness, of originality, says a fa- 
mous French critic, in that Gascon and Protestant youth that 
pressed around Henry IV, is found again in d'Aubigne. At 
the age of ten he made his first expedition in his shirt. 
Guizot tells us that a kinsman of pacific temperament locked 
up young d'Aubigne to quell his martial humor. Every 
evening his garments were taken away and brought back in 
the morning. He could escape from his prison only through 
the window. But, " What youth wants, God wants "; the 
linen of his bed served him as a ladder ; then he was free, but 
without clothing other than his shirt. In this attire he 
reached, at night, a company of Huguenot cavaliers. They 
covered his nakedness, the captain took him on his horse, and 
thus he entered on his campaign. At one time he danced the 
gaillarde x before the Grand Inquisitor ready to condemn him 
to death, escaped through a window, and, fleeing to the do- 
mains of Renee de France, hastened to seat himself at the feet 
of the princess, where, on a silken cushion, he improvised, still 
out of breath, and soiled with dust, a sermon on contempt of 
death, after the Bible and Seneca. 

He was a very energetic prose writer, and evolved such 
audacious opinions in his Histoire universelle depuis 1555 
jusqu'en 1601, that he was obliged to take refuge in Geneva 
after its publication. Here he was occupied in repairing 
the fortifications of the city from the material of a church 
which had been in ruins for forty years. His enemies con- 
sidered this sufficient cause for his arrest and condemnation 
to death. It was the fourth time that the death sentence hung 
over d'Aubigne, but he was so little concerned about it that 
he married shortly after. 

D'Aubigne wrote two spirited pamphlets: La Confession 
du sieur de Sancy, who changed his faith several times, and 
Le Divorce satyrique de la reine Marguerite. He was one 
of the most vigorous satirists and poets of his times. Les 
Aventures du Baron Foeneste is one of the most ingenuous 

1 A bold dance which originated in Italy and was brought to France, 
where it became the vogue in the sixteenth century. The composer, 
Praetorius, called it an "invention of the devil, full of shameful and 
obscene gestures and of immodest movements." 

147 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

satires of customs and manners. The story is in the form 
of a dialogue between two men. One, the Baron de Foeneste 
(from the Greek <f>alvecr6ai, to appear), is a Gascon gentleman, 
a Papist, ridiculously attired with jacket of many colors and 
flowing trousers of taffeta. He relates with bragging fatuity 
and comical vanity to his friend, Enay (from the Greek elvcu, 
to be), a Huguenot, his adventures at court. Enay is a man 
of sedate qualities, wise and virtuous, who has the good sense 
to remain peacefully on his estates. In this book, d'Aubigne 
intermingles violent attacks with caustic humor against all the 
follies of his time, particularly against the great failing of 
the century— that of false appearance. 

The great satirical poem of d'Aubigne, Les Tragiques, 
discloses a grewsome picture of the horrors of the religious 
wars. Pathos, force, audacity, and outbursts of passionate 
hatred characterize the work. It is a picture in seven books, 
of the misfortunes of France and the persecution of the Prot- 
estants. The first book, entitled Miseres, is a general picture ; 
the second, Les Princes, is a furious satire on the court of 
Henry III; the third book, La Chambre Doree (The Golden 
Chamber), is a diatribe against magistracy; the fourth, Les 
Feux (Fire), and the fifth, Les Fers (Irons), are the recitals 
of different death penalties meted out to Protestants; the 
sixth is Vengeance, and the seventh, Jugement. Les Tra- 
giques is a great lyric poem, but written without art. 

In contradistinction as to sex, but equal as to ability, a 
woman stands among these warrior writers who added fame 
to the sixteenth century — Marguerite de Valois (1492-1549), 
called " la Marguerite des Marguerites " (the pearl of pearls) . 
She was the sister of Francis I, the wife of the Due d'Alencon, 
and for many years as the wife of Henri d'Albret, the Queen 
of Navarre. A spirited woman of brilliant education, of high 
intellect, scrupulous morality, and eager sympathies, she en- 
couraged the arts, protected scholars, and had a marked influ- 
ence upon the' Renaissance movement in France. She wrote 
with facility in verse and in prose, which merited for her the 
title of " the tenth Muse." She is especially famous as the 
author of the Heptameron, sl collection of seventy -two stories 
after the manner and plan of Boccaccio's Decameron. They 
are narrated with much cleverness, but some of them are too 

148 



SIXTEENTH-CENTURY POETRY AND PROSE 

licentious for modern taste; for taste varies with the epoch 
we live in. 

The sixteenth century is also famed for its humane activ- 
ity. It is in this century that St. Vincent de Paul established 
the first home for foundlings. A provision was made by him 
for the foundlings, by which he secured through a brief, but 
effective appeal, forty thousand livres for the purpose, The 
Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul, formerly called Daughters of 
Charity, were first united to care for these poor abandoned 
children whom Vincent de Paul rescued from starvation or 
ill-treatment. 1 Vincent de Paul founded the Priesthood of 
the Mission, called, later on, Lazarists. He also founded 
a large number of hospitals, and ended his holy career at the 
age of eighty-five. He was canonized by Clement XII. 

1 In Victor Hugo's L'Homme qui Rit (The Man Who Laughs) there is a 
chapter on the Comprachicos — monsters in men's form who kidnaped 
deserted children, cut their muscles and otherwise mutilated them, and 
then sold them to the lords whom their deformities would amuse. The 
existence of the Comprachicos is disputed. 



•MMta 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

The seventeenth century, commonly called le Siecle de 
Louis XIV, begins with the stormy minority of that king 
under the regency of Anne of Austria, the queen mother. 
In this period occurred the civil wars, undertaken by the 
great lords, to restore their expiring power, the Cabale des 
Import ants (Plot of the Importants) and the mad doings of 
the Fronde. 

The Plot of the Importants with the Dukes de Beaufort 
and de Guise as leaders, whose object it was to frustrate the 
power of Mazarin, ended with Beaufort's imprisonment at 
Vincennes. The wars of the Fronde were also directed against 
Mazarin. They were parliamentary and artistocratic insurrec- 
tions against the policy of Anne of Austria and Mazarin, 
and were divided into two periods. The first or Parliamen- 
tary Fronde lasted from August, 1648, to March, 1649. The 
second or Fronde of the Princes (the party of the Condes) 
lasted from October, 1649, to September, 1653. When Ma- 
zarin wished to impose a tax, the burden of which would be 
borne by the poor alone, the magistrates were filled with pity, 
and when the edict was presented for registration, they re- 
jected it. A special court of justice was thereupon convened, 
and Louis XIV, at the age of seven, was conducted to Parlia- 
ment, where the tax was registered. Mazarin caused some 
magistrates to be imprisoned, and the people of Paris revolted 
against the king's troops. On one side was the Regent Anne 
of Austria, and Mazarin; on the other, the enemies of the 
court. There was fighting of a morning and dancing at night. 
For symbols, the frondeurs wore straw bouquets on their hats. 
They satirized the power of Mazarin by songs and couplets; 

150 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

but he only 'iaid in his Italian French : S 'ils cantent la can- 
zone tta, ils pagaront." ("If they sing their little song they 
will pay.") The most popular of those Mazarinades, as the 
satirical rhymed pamphlets were called, is the one by 
Scarron : 

Un vent de fronde 

A souffle ce matin; 
Je crois qu'il gronde 

Contre le Mazarin. 1 

A price was placed on the head of Mazarin, and he was forced 
into exile, but soon restored. The name Fronde, sarcastically 
given, was first applied to the malcontents, it is said, by a 
magistrate of the Parliament, who compared their resistance 
to that of the street urchins who defied each other with slings 
(frondes) in the moats around Paris, and often turned 
against the archers sent to arrest them. 

This period was but the continuation of the stormy times 
of the sixteenth century. " One sees," says a French critic, 
" the same disorder in the customs of the times, the same un- 
intelligent imitation of the antiquity of Italy and Spain; 
hence in literature the same license of expression, the same 
pedantry, the same effects, the same Italian plays on words, and 
the same Spanish magniloquence which are the characteris- 
tics of the preceding century. Only during the second half 
of the seventeenth century, beginning with the actual reign 
of Louis XIV, did French genius — enlightened by the torch 
of spiritual philosophy, of religion, of antiquity well under- 
stood, and encouraged by the munificence of the great king — 
begin to display all its qualities, and the French language to 
acquire that degree of maturity and perfection beyond which, 
perhaps, it may change, but not improve. Louis XIII was a 
weak, timid prince, indifferent to letters. Under his reign 
the Court exercised no influence upon society or upon litera- 
ture. However, men's minds having become more enlight- 
ened, there was a tendency toward gentler and more elegant 
manners. Societies were formed in Paris for the betterment 

1 A "Fronde" wind blew this morning; I believe it is roaring against 
Mazarin. 

151 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

of social behavior, to purify the relations between men and 
women, and to make the language more decent, more reserved, 
more regular." 

The most celebrated of these societies is that which assem- 
bled at the Hotel de Rambouillet, the first and the most illus- 
trious of the literary salons. It had existed since 1610, but 
the period from 1624-1648 marked the time of its glory and its 
influence. It was, so to speak, directed successively by three 
women of distinguished minds and charming grace: the* 
Marchioness of Rambouillet; her daughter, Julie d'Angennes, 
later Duchess of Montausier; and her younger daughter, 
Angelique de Rambouillet, who was, later, the first wife of 
the Marquis de Grignan. The Marquis of Rambouillet, grand- 
master of the royal wardrobe, had married Catherine de Vi- 
vonne, in whom were united loveliness of figure with a scrupu- 
lous virtue, a cultured mind, a pure taste, and a great pas- 
sion for letters. 

The entire Hotel de Rambouillet was reconstructed ac- 
cording to the plans of the Marquise, who also introduced 
an innovation as to the artistic decoration of the rooms. One 
of these, the Chambre bleue (blue room) so called because 
the walls, hangings, and furniture were of blue velvet, has 
become famous as the rendezvous of brilliant men and beauti- 
ful women. This room has been the subject of poems by 
Voiture, Tallemant des Reaux, and Chapelain who called it 
the Loge de Zyrphee. 

Madame de Rambouillet assembled at her house a choice 
society free from the license that prevailed in the morals 
and the language of the times. The men were called Pre- 
cieux and the women Precieuses, and this name was pleasing, 
since it was bestowed upon women of irreproachable conduct 
and a taste for spiritual things, who prided themselves on the 
delicacy and elegance of their sentiments, their manners, and 
their language. The name of Catherine, the Marquise de 
Rambouillet, seemed unpoetic, so Malherbe made it into an 
anagram : Arthenice. The beautiful Arthenice, the ' ' incom- 
parable " as she was also called, although susceptible to the 
cold, could not endure fire because it burned her skin ; so she 
received her guests in an unheated chamber. The guests 
ranged themselves in the ruelle, the space between the wall 

152 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

and the bed, 1 on which the marquise sat wrapped in furs. 
Hence came the expression, coureitr de ruelles. 2 

Here were united the beaux-esprits of the times to dis- 
cuss intellectual questions and to cultivate, the belles-lettres. 
Words were examined from all sides with minute care, and 
were admitted or rejected by a majority of votes. The gram- 
marian, Vaugelas, was the president of this singular academy 
and his opinion regarding the fate of words had great weight. 
The reform begun by Malherbe in the French language, 
was continued by the Precieuses, and the transformation which 
was consummated in the literature during the first thirty years 
of the century is due to them. The poets of the hour read 
their latest madrigals. Comedies and tragedies were played, 
the Marquise herself taking part. Brilliant minds exchanged 
ideas and discussed questions on philosophy, literature, and 
grammar. 

The reign of the Precieuses, which had dominated the liter- 
ary world for so many years, had been prepared by the rococo 
style of the idealistic novels originating in Italy and in Spain. 
In Italy, with Marines Les Querelles des desesperes, and San- 
nazzaro's Arcadia; in Spain, with Gongora's cultism and 
Montemayor's novel Diana enamorada. These were imitated 
in France by Honore d'Urfe in his novel L'Astree. 

In d 'Urf e 's novel, the principal characters were shepherds 
who spun out their love stories. One saw through trans- 
parent pseudonyms Henri IV, Marguerite de Valois, his 
first wife; and Gabrielle d'Estrees, whose sudden death by 
poison only prevented her from becoming his second wife, and 
various other personages. There are some interesting passages 
in the long recitals, but for the most part there are intermi- 
nable dissertations on the different degrees of love. It is the 
same style of discussion which formed the theme of conversa- 
tion among the Precieuses. Of these there were three cen- 

1 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries many people of high rank 
received guests before rising. 

2 Formerly this expression meant one who frequented assiduously the 
society of the great ladies. It is equivalent to the term now in use, coureur 
de salons. Style de ruelle meant style precieux. A coureur de ruelles now 
means one who frequents resorts of low debauchery (usually in the ruelles — 
lanes or alleys). 

153 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ters in the seventeenth century : the Hotel de Rambouillet, the 
palace of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, and the house of Made- 
moiselle de Scudery. There the Precieuses composed little 
verses and madrigals, and above all, heroic novels. Mademoi- 
selle de Scudery wrote Clelie (histoire romaine) a tiresome 
novel, in which she depicts under a Roman guise, the Precieuse 
coterie. With ridiculous sentimentalism and fastidious lucu- 
brations, she describes the map of the Pays de Tendre 
(Country of Love), whose capital is Tendre sur Inclination 
(Love on the River of Inclination). The various degrees of 
love are described as towns, rivers, and mountains. The great 
Conde, the Duchess of Longueville, the Archduke Leopold of 
Austria, the Marquise de Rambouillet, and other celebrities 
of the day, are easily recognized under thinly disguised char- 
acters in the novel. This idealistic style which was in vogue 
in all the cultivated societies of Europe, was called Marinism 
(after Mar ini) in Italy, Gongorism (after Gongora) in Spain, 
euphuism in England (after Lyly's Euphues), and preeieux 
in France. The Precieuses contributed much to establishing 
that art of conversation which is one of the glories of France. 1 
But — as too often happens — the goal in view was overleaped. 
By dint of purifying the sentiments, of " giving the mind 
control over matter, " they often sacrificed good sense, and in 
their super-refinement of the sentiments, in their search for 
the finest, they ruined the delicacy of wit and sentiment. The 
language became pretentious and abounded with far-fetched 
and affected metaphors. The most elevated as well as the 
most simple things lost their names, and a direct and simple 
manner of speech became entirely out of fashion. Under 
pretext of banishing vulgar words and employing only beauti- 
ful language, all that is natural and simple was treated as 
base and ignoble. Innocent expressions were proscribed, and 
the language was in a fair way to become a ridiculous and 
unintelligent jargon. When the Precieuses would speak of 
servants, they* referred to them as the " faithful," or the 

1 For centuries the French have laid stress on the art of conversing and 
have perfected it to such an extent that they can discuss the most delicate 
subjects in such a manner as not to shock the sensibilities. This is the 
triumph of the art of conversation over the coarseness of realities and even 
of thought. 

154 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

1 ' necessary ' ' ; they went to meet you ' ' with the wings of 
impatience "; the nightcap became the " innocent accomplice 
of a lie " ; the eyes were the * ' mirrors of the soul, ' ' or the 
" paradise of the soul "; the ears were the " doors of the 
understanding ' ' ; gray hairs were ' ' quittances d 'amour ' ' 
(acquittances of love) ■ trees were " rustic ornaments "; the 
sun was the * ' torch of the day ' ' ; the feet were the ' ' poor 
sufferers " ; a glass of water, a ' ' bath for the interior " ; a 
broom, the * ' instrument of cleanliness ' ' ; the chemise, the 
' ' constant companion of the dead and the living ' ' ; and war, 
the " mother of disorder/' Instead of saying sit down, the 
affected term " satisfy the longing of this chair to embrace 
you " was used. Instead of telling the servant to extinguish 
the candle, they would say ' ' take away the superfluity of that 
light." Many of these expressions found a permanent place 
in the French language; such as, " f elicit er " (to felicitate) 
" le masque de la vertu " (the mask of virtue) for hypocrisy 
" perdre son serieux (to loose one's seriousness) for to laugh 
and, strange as it may seem, the word " s 'encanailler " (to 
keep low company) . 

This manner of speech was taken up by the clumsy imita- 
tors of the Precieuses of the Hotel de Rambouillet who 
abounded in Paris, and had spread to the provinces, when 
Moliere began an active crusade against them in his immortal 
satire Les Precieuses Ridicules. It was his first effective 
blow and was continued in Les Femmes Savantes. The great- 
est names of all nobility and of literature were among the 
Precieux and Precieuses of the Hotel de Rambouillet, but Mo- 
liere inspired by the " demon of comedy," fearlessly assailed 
them with that recklessness characteristic of genius. Neither 
did Moliere timidly try his play on the provinces, but pro- 
duced it boldly in the Petit-Bourbon Theater in 1659 and 
achieved a glorious victory. The members of the Hotel de 
Rambouillet were present at the first performance, and were 
clever enough not to recognize themselves, and to applaud. 
Angelique de Rambouillet, who presided, was a partisan of 
Moliere. 

Among the illustrious women who shone in the salon 
of the Marquise de Rambouillet were the Marquise de Se- 
vigne, Duchesse de Longueville, Marquise de Lafayette, Mar- 

155 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

quise de Sable, Mademoiselle Paulet, and others. Madeleine 
Paulet, on account of her golden hair called the Lionne rousse, 
counted among her mourants 1 the dukes of Guise and of 
Bellegarde as well as marquises and marshals. The great 
lords who frequented the Chambre bleue of Arthenice were 
the Prince de Cond6, the most famous of that illustrious line 
of princes; the Marquis de Sable, the Due de La Roche- 
foucauld, the Marquis de Vigean and the Due de Montausier, 
who after " sighing " for fourteen years for Julie, the fair 
daughter of the house, was finally rewarded for his devotion. 
Julie was not so much the child of her parents as the child 
of the Hotel de Rambouillet. When hCr father spoke of 
giving her in marriage, there was a general outcry : the Hotel 
without Julie was inconceivable. The Duke presented Julie 
for a New Year's gift (1641) with a collection of sixty-three 
madrigals composed by the beaux-esprits of the day. It was 
called the Guirlande de Julie (Julie's garland), and was in 
the form of a manuscript on vellum in folio, of twenty-nine 
leaflets. Each one was ornamented with a flower painted by 
the famous artist Robert, and under each flower was written 
by the calligraphist Jarry, one of several madrigals. The 
Duke himself composed sixteen and even the great Corneille 
contributed verses on the tulip, the orange blossom, and the 
white everlasting. This valuable garland now in the possession 
of the Due d'Uzes, was once the property of England, ac- 
quired at a cost of thirty thousand francs. 

The distinguished Vincent Yoiture (1598-1648), the son 
of a wine merchant of Amiens, was one of the most brilliant 
minds of the celebrated society. With Yoiture gallantry en- 
tered poetry. His Lettres, full of elegant gossip and a spir- 
ited joyousness, qualities for which he was unsurpassed as a 
conversationalist, had a prodigious success. 

Benserade (1613-1691), the favorite poet of the grandes 
dames, was also a dramatic author. His chief claim to fame 
rests in having provoked the celebrated battle of sonnets which 
lasted about a year and a half. In opposition to Benserade 's 
sonnet on Job, Yoiture wrote his sonnet to Urania, and there 

1 1, e., suitors ready to die for their ladylove. (Expression used by the 
Pr£cieuses for amoureux.) 

156 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

ensued a literary battle. The court and the city took part with 
great zest ; hence the names Uranistes and Jobelins, indicative 
of the partisans of the two poets. Many writings in verse and 
prose aLso appeared under these names. ' * The factions of the 
Guelfs and Ghibellines, of the white rose of Lancaster and 
the red rose of York, caused no more blood to flow than this 
literary civil war of the Uranistes and Jobelins, caused ink 
to flow." The French Academy and the Sorbonne declined 
to arbitrate, so the committee of awards of the University of 
Caen decided in favor of Yoiture. Corneille entered into 
the debate, saying that one of the sonnets was the most in- 
genious, but he would have wished to have written the other. 

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1594-1654), a disciple of Mal- 
herbe, effected for prose the reform which his master had 
brought about in poetry, he gave it nobility, harmony, and 
order. Balzac's Lettres, published in 1624, were a prodigious 
success in all Europe and gained for him the title of ' ' grand 
epistolier de France. ' ' 

Claude Favre de Yaugelas (1585-1660), the oracle of the 
Precieuses, labored for thirty years on a free translation, 
purely written, of the work of Quintus Curtius. His work 
Bemarques sur la Langue Frangaise, is considered excellent. 

Racan (1589-1670), who in spite of his shyness and awk- 
ward absence of mind, fell in love many times, was inspired 
to write a pastoral of three thousand verses. 

The poet Chapelain (1595-1674), after twenty years of 
work, published the first twelve cantos of his La Pucelle (The 
Maid of Orleans). These the Duchess of Longueville pro- 
nounced ' B very fine but very tedious, ' ' and so Chapelain did 
not dare to have the rest of his epic printed; it remained in 
manuscript in the files of the Bibliotheque Nationale. 1 

Gombauld was the author of Endymion. Owing to his tall 
figure and curt speech, he was surnamed le beau tenebreux. 2 

Oliver Patru, academician and lawyer, was called the 
11 French Quintilian. ' ' He excelled by virtue of a correct- 

1 Founded in the fourteenth century at the palace of the kings, it was 
the first library accessible to the public, one hundred years before Nicholas 
founded the library of the Vatican. 

2 A name assumed by Amadis de Gaule. The expression has passed 
into the language and applies to a taciturn and melancholy lover. 

157 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ness, a refinement, a good taste, and an elegance unknown at 
that time to the bar. He was the arbiter of the art of speak- 
ing well, and his inaugural discourse before the Academy was 
so esteemed that a similar one was exacted from that time on, 
of all the members newly admitted. His works were published 
several times during his lifetime. 

Godeau, prelate litterateur, was called the " dwarf " of 
Julie, because of his small stature and his assiduities to the 
fair Julie. These men with Cospian, the eloquent preacher, 
and his pupils, Richelieu and Bossuet, who made his debut 
as preacher in the famous Chambre bleue, were all frequenters 
of the Hotel de Rambouillet. All these writers constituting 
the salon of the Hotel de Rambouillet and the numerous other 
salons 1 which sprang up in emulation of the Rambouillet, 
were artists in the matter of language. They were solely oc- 
cupied in polishing the verbal instrument; they wrote only 
to make fine sentences. But if they produced nothing power- 
ful and profound in this reform, they rendered great services 
by purifying and disciplining the language and fixing the 
rules of syntax. They gave the language a number of words 
which have endured; they held up to honor all beautiful 
sentiments expressed in books or in the intercourse of life, 
and contributed toward elevating the morals and refining the 
manners. Therefore the famous reunions of the Chambre 
bleue of the Marquise de Rambouillet are considered one of 
the epochs in the history of French literature. 2 

In direct contrast to, but actuated by the same impulses 
which produced the sentimentalism of the Precieuses were the 
burlesque writers. Both were extreme forms resulting from 
Italian and Spanish influences brought to bear upon French 
literature. Sarazin, the " Hamilcar " of the Precieuses, is 
said to have written the first French burlesque verses, but he 
and his many imitators were surpassed by Scarron who was 

1 The salons of Mesdames de Choisy, de Fiesque, de Sully, de Rohan- 
Chabot, and Mademoiselle de Scud6ry, whose Saturdays became very cele- 
brated. Even journals were written for these assemblies in the ruelles, 
as the Gazette de Soret written for the ruelles of Madame de Longueville. 

2 Not an unmixed blessing, however, for in bowing to the dictum of 
the beau monde the writer, now and then, had to sacrifice depth and 
loftiness of thought to perfection of style. 

158 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

the first to undertake a large burlesque work. Paul Scarron 
(1610-1660), whom a cruel practical joke confined for the 
rest of his life to an invalid's chair, brought burlesque into 
great vogue for ten years. The loss of his health was followed 
by that of his fortune; nevertheless, he offered shelter to 
Francoise d'Aubigne (later Madame de Maintenon, second 
wife of Louis XIV), who was early orphaned and without 
sustenance. He offered to pay her dot, if she wished to be- 
come a nun, or to marry her, if she preferred that. She was 
then sixteen, and became a widow at twenty-five. On his 
death-bed, he addressed these words to his wife : " I leave you 
without worldly possessions, virtue does not bestow any ; how- 
ever, always be virtuous. ' ' It was then that Madame Scarron 
became governess for the children of Madame de Montespan, 
the mistress of Louis XIV, and later when de Montespan fell 
into disfavor, the wife of Louis XIV without the title of' 
queen. Of the peculiar union of Scarron and Francoise 
d'Aubigne Jules Lemaitre writes: " An abbot disguised as 
an Indian during the carnival was forced to take a nocturnal 
bath, became a cripple, and was confined by paralysis to his 
chair for twenty-two years. During this time he never slept 
an entire night, nor did he ever stop groaning in his pain 
except to burst into laughter. This man was the founder of 
burlesque poetry and had the reputation of being the gayest 
of men. In his day his popularity was more real than that 
of Corneille or Victor Hugo, his fame more prodigious. But 
this is insignificant. At the same time there was a little girl 
who, born in prison and raised in Martinique, returned to 
France, watched over the turkeys of a wicked and avaricious 
relative, and experienced poverty and hunger — and who be- 
came the wife of the greatest king in the world. Surely these 
two destinies taken individually would be very strange ! But 
what of their being united? There is something more extra- 
ordinary than the personality of Scarron and the fortunes of 
Francoise d'Aubigne, and that is the marriage of the cripple 
and the " belle Indienne," future mistress of France. This 
produced in their lives the most violent antithesis, something 
as hyperbolieally contrasted as one of Victor Hugo's dramatic 
conceptions. ' ' 

Scarron laid the foundation of the burlesque school with his 

159 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

epic, Typhon, ou la Gigantomachie, in which Typhon rolls 
tenpins with his friends, and when he is hit with a ball, 
throws it into Olympus, whereupon war ensues between the 
gods and the Titans, in which the latter are defeated. Scarron 
was the creator of French travesty. His Virgile Travesti is a 
travesty of Vergil's " ^Eneid." His most famous work is 
the Roman Comique, in which he describes the lives and ad- 
ventures of a wandering theatrical troupe in a refreshingly 
natural and interesting manner. Of this, similarities can be 
found in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister and Gautier's novel, Le 
Capitaine Fracasse. Moliere, who was a zealous reader of 
Scarron, borrowed several of his scenes for various plays of 
his own; Sedaine took from him the idea of La Gageure 
Imprevue (The Unlooked for Wager). Scarron 's La Maza- 
rinade, a bitter satire against Cardinal Mazarin, cost him his 
pension as Malade de la Reine; l but his style of writing was 
very much in vogue, and his comedies, the best of which is 
Jodelet, ou le Maitre Valet, yielded him an income. Scarron 
is known to posterity as the creator of the burlesque genre. 
He himself composed a burlesque testament, and a touching 
epitaph which has remained famous : 

Celui qui cy maintenant dort 

Fit plus de pitie" que d'envie, 
Et souffrit mille fois la mort 

Avant que de perdre la vie. 

Passant, ne fais ici de bruit, 

Garde bien que tu ne reveilles: 
Car voici la premiere nuit 

Que le pauvre Scarron sommeille. 2 

1 Madame de Hautefort obtained for Scarron an audience with the 
Queen, Anne of Austria, who granted him a pension of five hundred 
€cus, for which he jestingly took the title of " Scarron, par la grace de 
Dieu, malade indigne de la Reine" (Scarron, by the grace of God, un- 
worthy patient of the Queen). Queen Christine of Sweden said to him: 
"The Queen of France has created you her malade, I make you my 
Roland." 

2 He who now sleeps here inspired pity rather than envy, and suffered 
death a thousand times before he lost his life. Passer-by, be very careful 
not to wake him, for this is the first night that poor Scarron slumbers. 

160 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

Of all the burlesque poets, Scarron alone has survived, 
and this genre in which he excelled disappeared with him. 
Charles Coupeau d'Assouci, a burlesque poet coming after 
Scarron, and who gave himself the title of ' ' Emperor of Bur- 
lesque, first of the name," is only remembered by Boileau's 
verses : 

Le plus mauvais plaisant eut des approbateurs, 
Et jusqu' a d'Assouci, tout trouva des lecteurs. 1 

Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) was a fore- 
runner of the Encyclopedists of the eighteenth century. His 
works bizarre, but interesting, had the characteristics of the 
burlesque, the precieux and the libertin. 2 His two best works 
are the satirical and fantastic descriptions of voyages: " His- 
toire comiquedes Etats et Empire de la Lune, and Histoire 
comique des Etats et Empire du Soleil, in which he describes 
his trips to the moon s and sun, satirises society, criticises 
current opinions and puts forth scientific questions. Swift 
in Gidliver's Travels, Voltaire in Micromegas, and Pontenelle 
in Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes have imitated de 
Bergerac. Jules Verne described a trip to the moon two 
hundred years after. From Bergerac 's Pedant joue, into 
which he introduced a peasant speaking his dialect, Moliere 
took two scenes for his Fourberies de Scapin. The character 
Sejanus in Bergerac 's tragedy, la Mort d'Agrippine, voices the 

1 The worst buffoon had approvers and even d'Assouci found readers. 

2 Libertin in the sixteenth century in France was one who professed 
liberty, in matters religous; and the libertins were a class of people who 
opposed the theocratic system of Calvin in Geneva and his regulation of 
their private life. In the seventeenth century libertin also expressed a 
tendency of the mind and not of manners. The greatest libertins of that 
century were the poet Theophile de Viau, the writers Saint-Evremond, 
Chapelle, and Fontenelle, who formed a transition between the great 
skeptics of the sixteenth century, Montaigne, etc., and those free-thinkers, 
the philosophers of the eighteenth century. 

3 Bergerac is supposed to have found inspiration for his Voyage a la 
lune in Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moon, translated from the Eng- 
lish and published in Paris in 1648. However, the original manuscript of 
Bergerac's Voyage a la lune recently discovered in the Royal Library at 
Munich, shows the dates 1641-1643 (the manuscript in the National 
Library at Paris gives the date 1649-1650). 

12 161 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

sentiments of the libertins of the day. Cyrano de Bergerac 
has lately made his bow before the public again as the hero 
of Rostand's drama. 

Antoine Furetiere (1619-1688) in his Roman Bourgeois. 
attacked the sentimental writings then in vogue, and showed 
the courage of his convictions by ridiculing the sentimentali- 
ties and affectations of society, and by portraying life among 
the middle classes — a thing unheard of ; in fact, it was consid- 
ered an audacity to write a story in which princes and prin- 
cesses, shepherds and shepherdesses did not play the leading 
parts. Furetiere also compiled a dictionary of some import- 
ance ; this the French Academy considered an infringement for 
which it excluded Furetiere from its number. 

Marc Antoine Gerard, Sieur de Saint- Amant (1594-1661) 
was the most celebrated and curious of the bacchanalian poets 
of France in the seventeenth century. In his poems Albion, 
and Borne ridicule, he is burlesque. In Les Goinfres (The 
Gluttons), Le Melon, etc., he is a "veritable genius, the poetic 
drinker, the chief and Anacreon of gluttons and haunters of 
cabarets, who swear only by the cup.' , By turns fantastic and 
realistic Saint- Amant was famous for his rustic and home-life 
descriptions. 

Bernade de La Monnoye was gifted with satirical humor 
together with a taste for the beautiful and the curious in lit- 
erature. When the Abbe de La Riviere, Bishop of Langres 
died, he left one hundred ecus to the poet who would write 
his epitaph. La Monnoye undertook it : 

Ci-git un tres grand personnage, 

Qui fut d'un illustre lignage, 

Qui poss^da mille vertus, 

Qui ne trompa jamais et qui fut toujours sage, . . . 

Je n'en dirai pas da vantage : 

C'est trop mentir pour cent ecus. 1 

1 Here lies a very great personage, 
Who was of illustrious lineage, 
Who possessed a thousand virtues, 
Who never deceived and always was wise, . . . 
I will say no more; 

For one hundred crowns these are too many lies. 
162 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

Valentin Conrart, a literary man and a frequenter of the 
Hotel de Rambouillet, and of the " Saturdays " of Mademoi- 
selle de Scudery, established a literary salon of his own, 
comprising about eight men of letters who met once a week 
at his house. They talked literature, they discussed their own 
works and projects, and enlightened one another with their 
counsels. This is the origin of the famous Academie Fran- 
chise; and these modest litterateurs — Conrart, Godeau, Gpm- 
bault, Habert, Malleville, Chapelain, Desmarets, Serizay — 
were the first members of that remarkable institution. Riche- 
lieu informed of these reunions, offered to organize this soci- 
ety as a public body under the protection of the king (1635) 
in emulation of the Crusca in Florence. Richelieu's proposi- 
tion was accepted, and the French Academy was formally con- 
stituted in 1637 by letters patent of King Louis XIII. The 
name Academy comes from Academe, the land belonging to 
Academos, a mythical Greek hero of the Trojan War. This 
land near Athens, planted with trees and surrounded by 
walls, was used as a gymnasium where Plato taught philosophy 
to his disciples. Up to 1635 the number of members of the 
French Academy had not yet reached thirty, but in 1637 the 
number was increased to forty, which was never exceeded. 

Under the pretext of honoring the society, of elevat- 
ing the character of the man of letters, and giving him more 
importance in the state, there were admitted some personages 
more eminent by their birth or their functions than by any 
literary distinction. Louis XIV having been declared the 
protector of the Academy, the title of Academician had its 
place in the hierarchy of the court, and was coveted by the 
greatest lords of France and the highest dignitaries of state 
and church. Although to-day the tendency is toward the 
selection of members on the basis of literary qualifications, 
originally this was not the case. As late as the end of the 
eighteenth century, Voltaire wrote: " The French Academy 
contains prelates, noblemen, lawyers, professors, and even 
some writers.' ' 

The Academy was to occupy itself solely with the French 
language — to purify it and to fix it by the publication of a 
dictionary, a grammar, and poetics. At Richelieu's request 
the Academy was charged with compiling and editing a dic- 

163 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tionary " which would bring the French language to its 
highest perfection in designating a means of reaching the 
highest degree of eloquence. " Vaugelas was put in charge 
of directing the enterprise. The dictionary then became the 
principal occupation of the Academy, but the first edition * 
did not appear until 1694. The slowness with which it pro- 
gressed made it the object of much raillery. An epigram 
on it by Boisrobert is famous : 

Depuis six mois sur PF on travaille, 

Et le destin m'aurait fort oblige* 

S'il m'avait dit: tu vivras jusqu' au G. 2 

In 1663, Colbert, minister of Louis XIV, appointed a 
committee of four (from the forty members) called La Petite 
Academie, whose special work it was to conduct the composi- 
tion and editing of the inscriptions on public monuments. 
Later this name was changed to Academie Royale des Inscrip- 
tions et Belles-Lettres. A third branch or class, the Academie 
des Sciences, was added to the original Academy by Colbert 
in 1666. 

For a long time the Academy had no fixed abode, but met 
at the different private houses, until Louis XIV assigned it 
a hall in the Louvre, which it held until 1793 (Year II of the 
Republican Calendar), when it was dissolved by the Conven- 
tion. In 1795, the Directoire reestablished the Academy 
(three branches) under the name of Institut National, to 
which Napoleon I added the fourth class or branch, the 
Academie des Beaux-Arts. The fifth branch, the Academie 
des Sciences Morales et Politiques was added in 1832 at 
Guizot's suggestion. Each of these five branches is composed 
of forty regular members (except the Academie des sciences, 
which has sixty-eight), and a great number of associates and 
correspondents. Every regular member receives 1500 francs, 
and the secretary of each branch, 6000 francs annually. Each 
branch meets independently of the others, except once a year 

1 The last (seventh) appeared in 1877. 

2 For six months they have been working on F, 
Fate would have been kind to me 
Had it said: " You will live till G." 
164 



THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

(October 25th), when a great general assemblage of all the 
members takes place in the Palais de l'lnstitut. 

The first branch, the Academie Francaise and its forty 
immortels, 1 exerts a powerful influence on the progress of 
literature, owing to the numerous annual prizes it bestows 
upon the worthy works of French literature; besides which 
it has the disposal of several prizes to reward noble deeds. 
" The Academy has impressed on the minds of the nation 
the idea that the glory of literature is an integral and neces- 
sary part of the greatness of a people." The Academy's 
original statutes are almost unaltered, and at the present time 
it works daily on its dictionary and grammar. It also criti- 
cises, approves, or disapproves, and judges the works it under- 
takes to crown. 

Since 1806, the general name of the five branches has been 
Institut de France, with the various qualifying adjectives — 
royal, imperial, or national — added according to the form of 
governments. And this Institut de France occupies the first 
place among all the Institutes in the world. 

1 The term immortel is used in a Society (and especially the Academie 
Francaise) in which deceased members are immediately replaced. 



CHAPTER XII 

CORNEILLE 

Lyric poetry was expiring and the tendency of poetry 
became by turns precieux, burlesque, and fantastic. The novel, 
too, was subject to the fashion of the hour — exotic, descrip- 
tive, historical — but, interminable and mediocre, it could not 
survive its day, except the realistic novel of Sorel and the 
Roman comique of Scarron. 

The theater on the contrary improved, and soon put forth 
masterpieces. When Hardy was still the great and almost 
sole purveyor of pieces for the stage, the simultaneous decora- 
tions * of the old mysteries were still in use, the scenes being 
reduced in size and placed in close juxtaposition according 
to the space allowed ; and the plays were confused and uneven. 
In his Mort d' Alexandre, the first two acts were taken up in 
the expression of portentous omens and sinister forebodings; 
in the third, Alexander was poisoned; and during the entire 
two last acts he died. 

From about 1628, a number of poets made their debut in 
tragedy: Theophile de Viau in Pyrame et Thisbe, 2 Racan, 
Rotrou, Francois l'Hermite, known as Tristan, whose Mari- 
amne became famous, du Ryer, Desmarets, La Calprenede, etc. 
Tragedy found its form with the establishment of the ' ' three 
unities/ ' which were employed for the first time in Jean 
Mairet's tragedy Sophonisbe (1629). The three unities: the 
unity of action, of time, and of place were considered the 

1 The grouping side by side on the stage of all the places where the 
action is to occur. 

2 Le voila, ce poignard, qui du sang de son maitre 
S'est souille lachement: il en rougit, le traitre. 

(Here is the dagger which, with its master's blood 
Has dastardly stained itself: it blushes, the wretch.) 

166 



CORNEILLE 

constituent and necessary elements of tragedy, as interpreted 
by the Italians from Aristotle's Poetica (Chapter VII), and 
which Mairet imitated. The critics of different countries in- 
terpreted these rules more or less correctly, and later it was 
established that while Aristotle insisted on unity of action 
as indispensable to the beauty of the drama, he only advocated 
strongly the observance of the unity of time (twenty-four 
hours), and did not mention unity of place. When Corneille 's 
Cid appeared, the question was agitated and the original in- 
terpretation of the rules was made authoritative. Chapelain 
and d'Aubignac helped to impose them and later Boileau 
reduced them to an exact formula : 

Qu'en un lieu, qu'en un jour, un seul fait accompli 
Tienne jusqu' a la fin le theatre rempli. 1 

The insistence of the " three unities " eliminated the pastoral 
and the tragi-comedy, and with the Cid, Corneille became the 
true creator of tragedy. The Cid marks the definite constitu- 
tion of tragedy; the adherence to the three unities, 2 a close 
study of the soul and the sustaining of the dramatic interest. 
Corneille 's tragedies reflect history and politics, and show 
an original conception of the sovereign will, together with 
loftiness of thought and heroism of sentiment; whence has 
come the phrase ecole de grandeur d'anie. (school of 
magnanimity). Racine in his eulogy of Corneille, delivered 
before the Academy said : ' ' You well know in what state you 
found the drama when he began to work. What disorder! 
What irregularity ! All the rules of art, even those of fitness 
and decorum were violated. In this infancy, or more properly 
speaking, in this chaos of the dramatic poem among us, 

1 Let one single deed accomplished in one place, in one day, 
Keep the stage filled until the end. 

2 Not a strict adherence, however; Corneille interpreted unity of time 
to mean the minimum of duration in time; unity of place, the minimum 
of variation in place, and unity of action, the maximum of verisimilitude. 
(G. Lanson.) 

The Preface of Cromwell (considered the manifesto of the Romantic 
school) of Victor Hugo overthrew the rule of the "three unities," in- 
sisting alone upon the unity of action as indispensable to a masterpiece. 

• 167 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Corneille after having for some time sought the right path 
and fought against the bad taste of his century, finally, in- 
spired by an extraordinary genius, and aided by the knowl- 
edge of the ancients, caused rationality to appear on the stage, 
accompanied by all the splendor, all the embellishments of 
which our language is capable; he happily adjusted the real 
with the ideal and left well behind him all his rivals." 

Before Moliere, comedy in France was but lightly esteemed, 
and the taste of the public turned to tragedy. Comedies 
were contrived by the tragic poets between tragedies, by way 
of recreation; for tragedies they reserved the best of their 
talent. Thus we have Cyrano de Bergerac's Pedant Joue, a 
bizarre buffoonery from which Moliere borrowed the scene de 
la galere, and another scene in Les Fourberies de Scapin. 
(The Impostures of Scapin) ; Scudery 's Trompeur Puni (The 
punished Deceiver) , the Comedie des Comedies, etc. ; Tristan 
l'Hermite's Folie du Sage (The Wise Man's Folly) ; Rotrou's 
La Bague de VOubli (The Ring of Oblivion), Diane (Diana), 
etc.; and, finally, Corneille 's youthful comedies, so free and 
brilliant in versification, Le Menteur 1 (The Fibber), and La 
Suite du Menteur. Le Menteur is a character picture, but not 
yet a character comedy. Corneille, for the first time, put a 
character into comedy, but he did not know how to build a 
comedy on this character. However, this was already a con- 
siderable progress over what had preceded, and the road to 
great comedy was open. Corneille was thus the creator of 
good comedy in France as he had been of true tragedy. Be- 
fore him nothing piquant, witty, or particularly amusing had 
appeared since " l'Avocat Patelm." M. E. Mennechet says: 
" In order to meet with some traces of French gayety, it is 
necessary to turn one 's steps to the Pont-Neuf , where opposite 
the statue of Henry IV, the charlatan Mondor and his asso- 
ciate Tabarin made the crowd merry by burlesque and buf- 
foonery, while selling a balsam which they proclaimed a uni- 
versal remedy. Many great lords and noble ladies stopped 
their carriages to listen to their witticisms. Among the actors 
in the open were three: Gros-Guillaume, Gauthier-Garguille, 

1 From the Spanish comedy La verdad sospechosa (The Suspicious 
Truth), by Don Juan Ruiz de Alarcon. 

168 



CORNEILLE 

and Turlupin, who drew such crowds that the comedians of 
the king, who were playing at the Hotel de Bourgogne, became 
jealous of their success and complained to Richelieu. The re- 
sult of this was that the Cardinal called the three mounte- 
banks to play before him in a corner of his palace, and they 
amused him to such an extent that he advised the royal play- 
ers to take the three jugglers into partnership. A hint from 
the Cardinal meant a command, and soon Gros-Guillaume, 
Gauthier-Garguille and Turlupin were installed in the Hotel 
de Bourgogne, to act their farces between the tragedies of the 
legitimate players. Soon the rival Theatre du Marais fol- 
lowed this example and played farces which shared the public 
favor with the tragedies of Rotrou and Corneille, and opened 
the field for the comic poet. 

Pierre Corneille, born at Rouen in 1606, of a family of 
state officials, had been destined for the bar from his child- 
hood. He was advocate general at the •■ Marble Table of 
Rouen. ' ' 1 His literary career began with the comedy Melite 
in 1629. Tradition has it that Corneille introduced into this 
comedy an adventure of his own life : Corneille was introduced 
by a friend to a young girl whom this friend loved dearly. 
Corneille supplanted the friend in the young girl's affections 
just as, in Melite, Tirsis supplants Eraste with Melite. His 
love Corneille has immortalized in the following verses : 

J'ai brule fort longtemps d'une amour assez grande, 
Et que jusqu' au tombeau je dois bien estimer, 
Puisque ce fut par la que j'appris a rimer. 
Mon bonheur commenca quand mon ame fut prise : 
Je gagnai de la gloire en perdant ma franchise.' 

Other comedies soon followed: Clitandre, la Veuve (The 
Widow), la Galerie du Palais, la Suivante (The Waiting 

1 The Table de Marbre was a tribunal of appeal from the decisions of 
the magistrates (maltres des eaux et forets), who had authority over the 
whole extent of their jurisdiction (mattrises). 

2 For a long time I was consumed by a great love, 
Which, even to the grave, I ought well to prize, 
Since it was through it that I learnt to rhyme: 

My happiness began when my heart was captured: 
Losing my freedom, I gained glory. 

169 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Maid), la Place royale. These comedies were witty and amus- 
ing without being coarse. About 1633 Corneille was presented 
to Richelieu and became one of his J ' five authors. ' ' Richelieu 
himself was ambitious to shine as an author and wrote some 
plays by a peculiar method of collaboration. He would 
choose a subject, indicate its division into acts and intrust 
the versification of each act to one of the five poets: Bois- 
robert, l'Estoile, Colletet, Rotrou, and Pierre Corneille. He 
reserved for himself the task of binding together all these 
parts written separately, and interjected verses of his own 
making. After the first attempt, La Comedie des Tuileries, 
naturally a weak production, Corneille withdrew from this im- 
possible union, much to Richelieu's chagrin. In this manner 
the tragedy of Mirame was composed. Richelieu displayed a 
fatherly tenderness for this drama, the representation of which 
cost him a sum equivalent to 200,000 or 300,000 ecus, and for 
which he had a theater built in his palace, now the Palais 
Royal. 1 " The applause bestowed upon this tragedy over- 
joyed the Cardinal. From time to time he arose and left his 
box to show himself to the spectators; again, he would order 
silence, in order to have the most beautiful passages admired." 
Corneille 's tragedy Medee, appeared in 1635, and the Illu- 
sion comique in 1636, and in the same year the Cid had its 
first performance in Paris, and was received with unbounded 
enthusiasm. "It is difficult to imagine," says Pellisson, 
" with what approbation this piece was received by the court 
and the public. People did not grow tired of it ; nothing else 
was heard in society; everyone knew a part by heart; the 
children were taught it, and in some parts of France, ' beau- 
tiful as the Cid ' became a saying." The court caught the 
spirit and wished to see the tragedy which had created such 
a sensation. The comedians were commanded to play it three 
times at the palace of the Louvre, and twice at the Cardinal's 
palace. Even criticism was silent for a moment; carried 
away by the popular current, stunned by the success of the 
play, the rivals of Corneille seemed to join the multitude of 

1 This Palais Cardinal, built by Richelieu, was presented by him to the 
King, and served for a long time as a residence for the princes of Orleans. 
The famous glass gallery, called the " Galerie d' Orleans," under the old 
regime a rendezvous for gamblers and libertines, was opened in 1829. 

170 



CORNEILLE 

his admirers. But soon they got their breath again, and their 
first sign of life was an act of resistance to the torrent which 
threatened to carry them away. With the exception of 
Rotrou, who was capable of understanding and enjoying 
Corneille, the uprising of the playwrights was unanimous. 
The malcontents and the envious ones had found in Riche- 
lieu an ardent and powerful auxiliary. The struggle became 
ardent and bitter. Much was written in praise or blame. 

Balzac wrote to Scudery, who had sent him his observa- 
tions on the Cid: " Consider, Sir, that all France makes 
common cause with Corneille, and that there is, perhaps, not 
one of the judges who — in spite of the rumor that you have 
conspired together — has not praised the work which you 
desire him to condemn. So, even if your arguments were in- 
vincible, and your adversary were to acquiesce, he would 
still have good reasons to console himself upon the loss of the 
suit, and to tell you that it is something more to have satisfied 
an entire kingdom than to have written a conventional play. 
This being so, I do not doubt that the gentlemen of the Acad- 
emy will find themselves hindered in a favorable judgment of 
your suit ; on the one hand, your reasoning will not shake them, 
and, on the other, the public approval will restrain them. You 
are victorious in the Cabinet; Corneille has won in the theater. 
If the Cid is guilty, it is of a crime that has been rewarded ; 
if he is punished, it will be only after a triumph. If Plato 
must banish him (the Cid) from his republic, he must crown 
him with flowers while banishing him, and treat him no worse 
than he once treated Homer." 

A polemic, still celebrated, appeared under the name of 
the " Quarrel of the Cid," and nothing was heard on the 
streets, it is said, except the cries of the sellers of pamphlets 
for, or against the Cid. The public remained faithful to the 
play, so the Cardinal craftily resolved to defer his judgment 
to the Academy, thus exacting from it an act of homage to 
him, under cover of deference to the predominant opinion. 
The Academy edited its Sentiments in December, 1637, but 
they did not satisfy the Cardinal. Corneille showed great 
displeasure, and said : ' ' The Academy proceeds against me 
with so much violence, and employs such a sovereign authority 
to close my mouth, that my sole satisfaction rests in thinking 

171 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

that the famous work on which so many brilliant minds have 
labored for six months, may, indeed, be deemed the sentiment 
pf the French Academy. But perhaps this will not be the 
sentiment of the rest of Paris. I have created the Cid for 
my own recreation and that of people of taste, who delight 
in the play." 

Corneille did not further defend himself; but the public, 
less docile, persisted in its opinion. It was as Boileau said, 
later on : 

En vain contre le Cid un ministre se ligue. 

Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue. 

L'Academie en corps a beau le censurer, 

Le public, revolte, s'obstine a Tadmirer. 1 

The struggle was terminated, and the Cardinal's anger ceased; 
and when Horace appeared in 1639, the dedicatory epistle 
was addressed to the Cardinal. In the same year, Cinna 
placed the reputation of the great poet at its height. 

Corneille returned to the obscurity of private life which 
agreed with the simplicity of his manners. It is said the 
Cardinal helped him to get married. Corneille lived at 
Rouen, in a house adjoining that of his younger brother, 
Thomas, 2 already well known through some comedies which 
had been successful. The two brothers married two sisters : 

Les deux maisons ne faisaient qu'une; 
Les clefs, la bourse etait commune; 

Les femmes n'etaient jamais deux; 
Tous les vceux etaient unanimes: 

Les enf ants confondaient leurs jeux ; 
Les peres se pretaient leurs rimes; 

Le meme vin coulait pour eux. 3 

1 In vain a minister leagues himself against the Cid; all Paris sees 
Chimene through Rodrigue's eyes. The Academy in a body has censured 
it in vain; the public, indignant, persists in admiring it. 

2 When Corneille was at a loss for a rhyme to complete a verse, he would 
open a small slide leading to his brother's room, exclaiming, for instance: 
" Sans souci, a rhyme." 

3 The two houses made but one; the keys, the purse were in common; 
the women were of one accord; all wishes were unanimous; the children 
mingled in their sports, the fathers lent each other their rhymes, the same 
wine ran for them. 

172 



CORNEILLE 

In Polyeucte (1643), Corneille's style is loftier and purer, 
his thoughts more exact. This play marked a second revolu- 
tion in endeavoring to overturn paganism, which was the pre- 
vailing idea of the theater. Corneille had dedicated this piece 
to the regent Anne of Austria. Richelieu was no longer 
present to impose his judgment, and Corneille wrote : 

Qu'on parle bien ou mal du fameux Cardinal, 
Ma prose ni mes vers n'en diront jamais rien; 

II m'a fait trop de bien pour en dire du mal, 
II m'a fait trop de mal pour en dire du bien! 1 

About the same time, Corneille 's comedy Le Menteur appeared 
upon the stage. 

There were three periods in the career of Corneille. The 
first comprised: Clitandre, La Galerie du Palais, La Veuve, 
La Place Roy ale, L } Illusion; the second, his best period: Le 
Cid, Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte, La Mort de Pompee, Nicomede, 
Rodogune; the third: Sophonisbe, Sertorius, Otlion, (Edipe, 
Agesilas, Pulcherie, Attila, Surena. The last plays were not 
worthy of his genius. 

Corneille had announced that he had given up the theater ; 
and he translated the "Imitation of Christ," in verses. " It 
is better, ' ' he had written in his preface to Pertharite, ' ' that 
I resign of my own volition, than that I be dismissed entirely ; 
it is right, that after twenty years of work I begin to notice 
that I am growing too old to be still fashionable. ' ' After six 
years of retirement he again appeared with (Edipe. Fouquet 
had recalled the genius of Corneille to the theater, and the 
poet wrote: 

Je sens le meme feu, je sens la meme audace 
Qui fit plaindre "le Cid," qui fit combattre "Horace;" 
Et je me trouve encore la main qui crayonna 
L'ame du grand PompSe et l'esprit de Cinna. 2 

1 Let them speak well or ill of the famous Cardinal : neither in prose nor 
verse will I ever speak of him. He has done me too much good for me to 
speak evil of him; he has done me too much evil for me to speak good of 
him. 

2 1 feel the same fire, I feel the same boldness which made the Cid to be 
pitied, which made Horace fight; and I still find myself the hand which 
drew the soul of the great Pompey and the mind of Cinna. 

173 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

" Pierre Corneille," says Faguet, " is the first man of 
great genius who appeared in France, and he remains one of 
the four or five great tragic poets of all time. He spent 
some ten years writing romantic, or even buffoon comedies; 
yet those pieces are still read with pleasure. Later on, he 
formed a conception of human greatness which became his 
conception of tragic greatness.' ' 

Corneille, in his energetic, sometimes sublime verses, de- 
picted men as they should be. " He moves us as before a 
masterpiece, he warms us with the rumor of a fine action, and 
he intoxicates us with the sole idea of a virtue removed from 
us forever by the space of three thousand years," said La 
Bruyere. Every other thought, every other preoccupation 
is strange to the poet; his characters breathe heroic passions 
which they pursue without turning aside or allowing them- 
selves to be fettered by a mortality still imperfectly fixed, and 
often opposed by the interests and engagements of factions; 
and thus he remains supremely a man of his time and of his 
country, while at the same time depicting Greeks, Romans, 
Spaniards. He does not preach virtue, but the heroism of his 
characters pervades the mind of the reader — it appeals to our 
better nature, our thoughts are purified and elevated — at such 
heights poetry and morals blend. La Bruyere says : ' ' When 
a book elevates the mind, do not seek another rule for passing 
judgment on the work ; it is well made, and made by a master 
hand. ' ' ^fhe poet used to say smilingly, when reproached for 
the slowness and sterility of his conversation: " I am none 
the less Pierre Corneille.' ' The world has passed the same 
judgment on his works; in spite of the failures of his last 
years, he has remained the " great Corneille." 

" The style of Corneille, " says Demogeot, " is the merit 
by which he excels. The touch of the poet is crude, severe 
and rigorous, with but little adornment and color. It is warm 
rather than brilliant; he is fond of turning to the abstract, 
and imagination yields to thought and reason. On the whole, 
Corneille, a pure genius, incomplete in his grandeur and his 
faults, creates for me the effect of those great trees, bare, 
rugged, sad, and monotonous of trunk, covered with branches 
and dark verdure only at the summit. Such trees are vig- 
orous, powerful, gigantic, with little foliage; abundant sap 

174 



CORNEILLE 

rises in them. But do not expect shelter, nor shade, nor 
flowers. ' ' 

Brunetiere writes of the tragedy of Corneille: "It is 
beautiful, it is wonderful, it is sublime, it is not human, nor 
living, nor true. ' ' But writes Lanson : " M. Brunetiere is 
severe. Corneille 's heroes are exceptional creatures; the de- 
ranged or passive heroes of the contemporaneous novel or 
drama, are they of a more normal and proportional nature? 
And is it not just as legitimate to select in the general human- 
ity some exceptional beings, as to depict conditions which are 
not common except in extreme and particular cases of human- 
ity ? And adds Lanson : " How the tragedy of Corneille takes 
color and life!. When one reads it the imagination is filled 
with the political history of the times. It appears as a clear 
concentration of moral traits, dispersed in the Memoires of de 
Retz and of Saint-Simon, in the letters and the papers of the 
ministers and ambassadors! It is to the France of Louis 
XIII what Le Rouge et le Noir 1 or the novels of Balzac are 
to the France of Charles X or Louis Philippe. . . . One has 
never entertained doubt as to the influence Corneille could 
exercise ; his tragedy is a school for the greatness of the soul. It 
incites aspiration to great efforts, to noble passions, to heroic 
sacrifices. Never has public opinion varied in this respect.' ' 

Corneille 's conception of tragedy is the exaltation of 
the sovereign will above the fatality of the passions, and it is 
from this standpoint — the sovereignty of the will — that Cor- 
neille regards the human soul. His heroes are masters of 
themselves : 

Qu' importe de mon coeur, si je sais mon devoir? 2 

Aristie in Sertorius. 

Je suis maitre de moi comme de l'univers : 

Je le suis, je veux Tetre. O siecles, 6 memoire, 

Conservez a jamais ma derniere victoire ! 3 

Auguste in Cinna. 

1 Red and Black, by Henri Beyle, known by the nom de plume of 
Stendhal. 

2 What matters about my heart, if I know my duty? 
3 1 am master of myself as I am of the universe : 

I am, it is my will that I be. Oh, ages, oh, memory, 
Retain forever my last victory ! 

175 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

Sur mes passions ma raison souveraine. 1 

Pauline in Polyeucte. 
Je suis fort peu de chose, 
Mais enfin de mon cceur moi-meme je dispose. 2 

Dirce in (Edipe. 

Faites votre devoir et laissez faire aux dieux. 8 

Old Horace in Horace. 

Lanson says the Cornelian sublimity lies therein that the 
whole soul, when the crucial moment comes, reaches with a 
single impulse toward the good. Examine, he says, the places 
where one feels the indefinable impression to which the word 
" sublime " has been applied: 

Je suis jeune il est vrai ; mais aux ames bien nees, 
La vertu n'attend pas le nombre des annees. 4 

Rodrigue in the Cid. 

Que vouliez-vous qu'il fit contre trois? — Qu'il mourut! * 

Horace. 
Ou le conduisez-vous? — 
— A la mort. 
— A la gloire. 6 

Polyeucte. 

Argument of Le Cid: Chimene, the daughter of Count 
Gormas, loves Don Rodrigo, son of Don Diego. The king 
names Don Diego tutor to his son, in consequence of which 
Don Gormas, who feels himself entitled to the post, quarrels 
with Don Diego and strikes him. As the latter is too old to 
revenge himself, his son, Don Rodrigo, challenges Count 

1 My sovereign reason over my passions. 
8 1 am but very little, 

But after all, I myself dispose of my heart. 
3 Do your duty and leave the rest to the gods. 

• I am young, 'tis true; but with generous souls 
Courage waits not for the number of years. 

• What would you have him do against three? — Die! 
c "Where are you leading him? (asks Pauline). 

"To death" (answers Felix). 
"To glory" (replies Pauline). 
176 



CORNEILLE 

Gormas and kills him in a duel. Chimene throws herself at 
the feet of the king and begs him to punish Rodrigo, her 
filial duty overpowering her love. Rodrigo, however, offers 
his dagger to Chimene begging her to revenge herself on him. 
Her love for him triumphs, and Rodrigo departs for the wars 
against the Moors, against whom he wins a great victory, from 
which he returns home as the Cid, 1 and is lauded as the savior 
of his country. Chimene persists in avenging her father and 
promises to be the wife of him who kills the Cid in a duel. 
Don Sanche is the rival of the Cid, and when vanquished by 
the latter brings his sword to lay it at the feet of the king. 
Chimene, thinking the Cid has been killed, pours forth her 
grief. The king seeing this, apprises her of the Cid's vic- 
tory in the duel, and decides that she marry the hero who has 
never ceased to love her. 

Many lines of this beautiful, powerful, and original trag- 
edy have passed into proverbs : 

Ses rides sur son front ont grave" ses exploits. 3 

Rodrigue, as-tu du coeur? 3 

A vaincre sans peril on triomphe sans gloire.* 

Argument of Horace: The city of iEneas, and that of 
Romulus — Alba and Rome — have been at war for a long time. 
To put an end to useless shedding of blood, it has been 
resolved to choose from both sides three champions and to 
give first rank to that one of the two cities whose champions 
are victorious. Alba chooses three brothers by the name of 
Curiatii, and Rome three brothers by the name of Horatii. 

1 The subject of Le Cid is taken from the Spanish author Guilhelm de 
Castro. The title of Cid is said to have been given to Rodrigo de Bivar 
(the principal national hero of Spain, famous for his exploits in the wars 
with the Moors) because of the remarkable circumstance that five Moorish 
kings or chiefs acknowledge him in one battle as their Seid, which is the 
Arabic, as Cid is the Spanish word, for "chief." The name has become 
proverbial to designate a young, intrepid warrior of chivalrous character. 

2 The wrinkles on his brow have engraved his exploits. 

3 Rodrigo, hast thou courage? 

* In conquering without danger, one triumphs without glory. 
13 177 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

But one Horatius has married Sabina, sister of the Curiatii, 
and one of the Curiatii is about to marry Camilla, sister of 
the Horatii. Horatius and Curiatius love their country 
equally; but Curiatius is overcome with emotion at being 
obliged to fight against those who will be doubly his brothers- 
in-law, while Horatius, on the contrary, from the moment 
when the interest of Rome is at stake, knows no longer Curi- 
atius, and thinks only of his country. 

One of the most sublime scenes is that where old Horatius, 
believing that his son has fled before the Curiatii, after having 
seen his two brothers slain before his eyes, is angered, and 
breaks out in threats against him. Soon he learns that his 
son did not flee ; far from it, he killed the three Curiatii, and, 
proud of his victory, he returns laden with the spoils of the 
conquered. He meets his sister Camilla and asks her con- 
gratulations. Camilla cares little for the glory of Rome; 
what she sees in this triumph is the death of her betrothed, 
and she curses her native city in a famous tirade that well 
expresses the dramatic height attained in Horace: 

Rome, Tunique objet de mon ressentiment! 
Rome, a qui vient ton bras d'immoler mon amant! 
Rome qui t'a vu naitre et que ton cceur adore! 
Rome, enfin, que je hais parce qu'elle t'honore! 
Puissent tous ses voisins, ensemble conjures, 
Saper ses fondements encor mal assures! 
Et si ce n'est assez de toute lTtalie, 
Que TOrient contre elle a TOccident s'allie; 
Que cent peuples unis des bouts de Tunivers 
Passent pour la detruire et les monts et les mers! 
Qu'elle-meme sur soi renverse ses murailles! 
Et de ses propres mains dechire ses entrailles! 
Que le courroux du ciel allume par mes voeux 
Fasse pleuvoir sur elle un deluge de feux! 
Puisse-je de mes yeux y voir tomber ce foudre, 
Voir ses maisons en cendre, et tes lauriers en poudre, 
Voir le dernier Romain a son dernier soupir, 
Moi seule en etre cause, et mourir de plaisir ! l 

Rome, the sole object of my hatred! 
Rome, for which thy arm has just slain my lover! 
Rome, which gave thee birth and that thy heart idolizes! 
178 



CORNEILLE 

Hearing those blasphemies, Horatius rushes upon his sis- 
ter and kills her. What will the Romans do? Shall they 
condemn Horatius who has just given them their victory? 
The judges condemn, but the people absolve him. 

Horace is founded on the historical story related by Livy, 
of the combat between the Horatii and Curiatii. Of all the 
plays of Corneille, it is the most realistic in its dialogue, 
characters, and actions; the second and third acts are among 
the most sublime he has ever created. 

Argument of China (or, the Clemency of Augustus) : 
The Emperor Augustus has intrusted Cinna, grandson of 
the great Pompey, with high offices and much power. Cinna 
loves Emilia, who although she returns his love, will not con- 
sent to marry him, unless he avenges the death of her father, 
who was executed by order of Augustus. Cinna then forms 
a conspiracy with the principal citizens of Rome, and comes 
to inform Emilia of the resolutions of the conspirators. His 
recital is scarcely ended, when a message of the Emperor 
summons him to the palace. Cinna, believing all to be lost, 
prepares to die; but Augustus, tired of the cares of empire, 
merely wishes to consult with him as to whether or not to ab- 
dicate. Cinna, who fears to lose the opportunity of revenging 
Emilia, prevails upon him with great eloquence to continue 
reigning. Then Maximus, another aspirant for the hand of 
Emilia, and jealous of Cinna, reveals the conspiracy to Augus- 
tus, who has the conspirators seized, but resolves upon clem- 

Rome, in short, which I hate because she honors thee! 
May all her neighboring states together conspiring 
Undermine her still insecure foundations! 
And if the whole of Italy be not strong enough, 
Let the East with the West join against her; 
May a hundred peoples from the ends of the earth 
Cross, to destroy her, both mountains and seas! 
May she tear down her walls over herself 
And with her own hands pluck out her entrails! 
May the wrath of Heaven kindled by my prayers 
Cause a deluge of fire to pour down upon her! 
May I with my own eyes watch the bolt fall, 
See her houses reduced to ashes, and thy laurels to dust, 
See the last Roman drawing his last breath; 
I alone be the cause of it all, and die exulting! 
179 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ency. He overwhelms Cinna with proofs of the plot and the 
remembrance of benefits conferred. Cinna expects only death, 
but Augustus forgives him, and disarms his hatred by the un- 
expected words: " Soyons amis, Cinna " (" Let us be friends, 
Cinna "), and unites him with Emilia, whose hatred yields 
to the royal clemency. 

Voltaire said : ' ' But, true or false, this clemency of 
Augustus is one of the noblest subjects of tragedy, one of 
the most beautiful lessons for princes. It points a great 
moral. This is, in my opinion, the master-work of Corneille, 
in spite of some defects.' ' 

Argument of Polyeucte. Christianity has penetrated into 
the Roman Empire, but is still persecuted. Felix, governor 
of Armenia, has given his daughter, Pauline, in marriage 
to Polyeucte, an Armenian lord whose credit may strengthen 
the fortune of Felix. Pauline loves Severus, a Roman gen- 
eral, and she yields, with regret, to the orders of her father. 
Edicts are issued commanding that Christians be put to 
death. Polyeucte converted by his friend, Nearches, be- 
comes a Christian, and publicly breaks the images of the 
false gods. Meanwhile, Severus, who was believed dead, 
arrives in Armenia, having by his valorous deeds become a 
favorite of the Emperor Decius. Felix, for fear of the Em- 
peror's wrath, and seeing in Polyeucte 's death a chance for 
gaining the Emperor's favorite as a son-in-law, has Poly- 
eucte arrested. Pauline wants to save her husband, whom 
she does not love; Severus unites his efforts with those of 
Pauline to appease Felix. But this ambitious villain sees 
in such generosity merely a trap, and hastens to destroy his 
son-in-law. Polyeucte persists in confessing his faith; he 
dies a martyr. His death arouses the admiration of Severus, 
who promises to procure the Emperor's protection for the 
new faith, and brings about the conversion of Felix and Pau- 
line, whose words: " Je vois, je sais, je crois, je suis desabu- 
see! " (I see, I know, I believe, I am undeceived) have be- 
come proverbial as expressing a profound conviction. 

The " Sun King " of that Age of Splendor did not shed 
much of his gold upon Corneille. He was less generous to 
the creator of French drama than to any other writer of his 
reign. During the last months of his life, Corneille 's illness 

180 



CORNEILLE 

exhausted his pecuniary resources. Boileau, who was in- 
formed of his sad position, went straightway to Versailles and 
offered to relinquish his own pension in favor of Corneille: 
" I cannot," he said to Madame de Montespan, " receive 
without shame, a pension from the King, while a man like 
Corneille is deprived of it." Louis XIV hastened to send 
one hundred louis to the illustrious patient, but two days 
later Corneille died at the age of seventy-eight years (1684). 
The nineteenth century would have justified his greatness and 
his genius, for Napoleon Bonaparte said of him: " I would 
have raised a poet like Corneille to the rank of a prince. ' ' 



CHAPTER XIII 

TRANSITION OF MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY — DESCARTES 

During the Middle Ages, philosophy was the " hand- 
maiden ' ' of theology. The church was the only moral power 
universally recognized. It treasured all the ancient culture — 
art, learning, science — everything centered in the monasteries. 
These were the schools (scola), the only places of instruc- 
tion. Hence the term, scholasticism, which in reality meant 
rather a method than a doctrine. 

Porphyry 1 in his celebrated Introduction to the Cate- 
gories, translated into Latin by Boethius, 2 sets forth the 
problem: " Are the universals realities, or only abstract con- 
ceptions? " This question agitated the scolastics and brought 
about the quarrel of the " Universals/' which gave rise to 
three philosophical schools in the Middle Ages: the Realist, 
the Nominalist, and the Conceptualist. 

Professor Schwegler 3 says: " Hand in hand with the 
development of Scholasticism in general proceeded that of 
the antithesis between nominalism and realism. The nom- 
inalists were those who held universal notions (universalia) 
to be mere names, empty conceptions without reality. The 
realists held firm by the objective reality of the universals 
(universalia ante res). The antithesis of these opinions took 
form first, as between Roscellinus, 4 as nominalist and Anselm, 5 

1 Melech, called Porphyry, a great philosopher and writer, was born in 
Syria about 232 a.d., and taught philosophy in Rome. 

2 Roman philosopher and poet of the sixth century. 

3 Schwegler's History of Philosophy, translated and annotated by James 
Hutchison Stirling, LL.D. 

"Roscellinus, born in France about 1150, died about 1220, called the 
founder of Nominalism. 

* Saint- Anselm, born in Italy 1033, died at Canterbury 1109. 

182 



TRANSITION OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 

as realist, and it continued henceforth throughout the whole 
course of Scholasticism. There began as early as Abelard x 
(1079), an intermediate theory (conceptualism) as much 
nominalistic as realistic, 2 which after him remained the domi- 
nant one (universalia in rebus). In this view the universal is 
only conceived, only thought, but it possesses also objective 
reality in the things themselves, nor could it be abstracted 
from them unless it were virtually contained in them. All 
the arguments of this school are founded on the assumption, 
that whatever is syllogistically proved has exactly the same 
constitution in actuality that it has in logical thought. ' ' 

Scholastic philosophy aimed to fit the truths of Christian- 
ity, and Anselm's doctrine — credo ut intellegam (I believe 
that I may understand) — is representative of that philosophy. 
In his Proslogium, he sets forth his ontological argument of 
the existence of God, which was combated by Gaunilon and 
Abelard. 

The doctrine of Aristotle, which flourished among the 
Arabian schools, was brought to Europe by the Arabs in 
Spain, in the eleventh century. From the twelfth century 
until the Renaissance, the doctrines of Aristotle were repre- 
sented as supreme authority in France. 

In the thirteenth century, the University of Paris was 
divided into two parties: the Thomists or partisans of the 
philosophy of Saint-Thomas Aquinas 2 and the Scotists or 
partisans of Duns Scotus. 3 Aquinas reproduced Aristotle's 
philosophy as he interpreted it from the Latin translations 
made from the Arabian. His doctrine was such an harmo- 
nious combination of reason and faith, that it became the 
theory officially taught in Catholic colleges. Duns Scotus 



1 Pierre Abelard, born at Le Pallet, near Nantes, France, in 1079, 
died 1142. 

2 Called the Doctor Angelicas and the Doctor Universalis. 

3 Birthplace uncertain, Scotland or Ireland (Dunstanburgh Castle), in 
1265 or 1274; died in Cologne. Dempster gives twelve arguments why 
Duns Scotus was a Scotchman. He studied at Oxford and became a 
Franciscan friar and later a professor of philosophy and Doctor of the 
University of Paris. Tradition says his lectures attracted thirty thousand 
students. His name Duns became proverbial for a learned man, and 
satirically used gave rise to the word dunce. 

183 



^M 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

opposed Aquinas, contending that God's omnipotence was 
not limited by reason. The Dominicans were more inclined 
to the Thomists, the Franciscans to the Scotists. This was a 
quarrel in which the clerical esprit de corps of the religious 
orders was as much a factor as the astuteness of the philoso- 
phers. On both sides were produced revelation, miracles, 
arguments. Duns Scotus, in his defense of the doctrine of 
the Immaculate Conception, is said to have refuted two hun- 
dred objections held by the Dominicans against this doctrine. 
His dialectical ingenuity in this controversy won for him the 
title of Doctor Subtilis. 

The abuse of dialectics and of useless abstractions, led 
some philosophical minds to mysticism, and some to the 
natural sciences. Saint Bonaventure, surnamed the " Ser- 
aphic Doctor,' ' one of the great theologians of the Middle 
Ages was a mystic, and taught that truth could only be 
attained with the aid of supernatural favor. Roger Bacon, 
an English monk living in Paris, was one of the greatest repre- 
sentatives of experimental science. On acount of his great 
learning and of his inventions, he was called by his admirers, 
the " Doctor Mirabilis," but his enemies prosecuted him for 
sorcery. Bacon's persecution was due to the fact that he no 
longer made philosophy entirely subservient to theology, but 
opposed clerical dogma, insisted on the reformation of the 
system of teaching, and announced the reform of science 
and the church. 

Philosophy identified with theology, a dangerous alliance, 
resulted in the proclamation of two truths — reason and 
religion. Roger Bacon and his disciple, William of Occam, 1 
approached the experimental method, and they have sometimes 
been called the precursors of critical philosophy, 2 and some- 
times of empiricism. 3 Jean Buridan, like his master Occam, 
was a nominalist, but inclined to determinism, 4 and to repre- 

1 Born in England 1270; died at Munich in 1347; doctor of philos- 
ophy and theology in Paris; was called the Doctor Invinciblis and Sin~ 
gularis. 

2 Analysis of reason. Kant was the founder of critical philosophy. 

3 Method relying on direct experience and observation rather than on 
theory. John Locke was the originator of empiricism. 

* The doctrine that will is determined by motives. 

184 



TRANSITION OF MEDIAEVAL PHILOSOPHY 

sent causeless motivation of the will as a deception. It was 
lie who. in a discussion on free will, used the famous sophism 
of the ass. placed between a bushel of oats and a bucket of 
water, and dying of hunger through eternal indecision which 
to satisfy first, his thirst or his hunger. This argument, which 
made him more famous than his writings, cannot be found in 
any of his works, and is supposed to be a souvenir of his oral 
recitations. 

The change from scholasticism — philosophy subservient 
to religion — to modern philosophy — independent reason — 
was affected by the growth of science, and the great revolu- 
tions in that field ( Copernicus. 1 Galileo. 2 Kepler 3 ; ; by the 
revival, with the Eenaissance movement, of letters, and of all 
the ancient systems of philosophy : Platonism.* Neoplato- 
ism. 5 Peripatetic ism. 6 Pythagoricism. 7 Skepticism. 5 Epicure- 
anism. 9 Stoicism. 10 and Mysticism. 11 

The modern period of philosophy, shows a sharp opposi- 
tion to the mediaeval. Scientific inquiry turned the thoughts 
of men to the contemplation of nature, and this led to the 
independent reasoning of the individual, and consequent 
emancipation from established authority, and finally, to Skep- 

: A Prussian, the founder of modern astronomy (1473-1543). He ad- 
vanced the theory that the planets revolved around the sun. 
: A famous Italian astronomer and physicist (1564-1642). 
3 A famous German astronomer (1571-1630). 

* Doctrine of Plato, a famous Greek philosopher, disciple of So- 
crates, teacher of Aristotle, and founder of the Academic School, fifth 
century. 

£ Philosophy originating with Ammonius Saccas in Alexandria in the 
third century. 

'- The philosophy of Aristotle taught in the walks of the Lyceum at 
Athens (from peripatetic — walking about). 

7 Doctrine of Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher and mathematician, 
sixth century, b.c. 

3 Also Pyrrhonism, a school of philosophy founded by Pyrrho, a Greek 
philosopher, third century, b.c. 

s Doctrine of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, fourth century, b.c. 

- : School of philosophy founded by Zeno, a Greek philosopher, third 
century, b.c. 

'-'- A sort of rationalistic philosophy of magic evolved from the union of 
the first discoveries in physics and the traditions of the Kabbala ^a mystic 
philosophy of the Hebrew relirionV 

186 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ticism. Francis Bacon 1 and Descartes, : the founders of 
modern philosophy, were skeptics. 

Descartes introduced a new method in the application of 
reason to metaphysics. He inaugurated the modern reaction 
by doing away with all prejudices and all presuppositions, 
by doubting everything he could, in order to see what refused 
to be doubted, leaving a starting point. The fundamental 
principle of his philosophy is cogito ergo sum (I think, there- 
fore I am). He started with this fundamental proposition 
and used it as a criterion for establishing other truths. These 
were his innate ideas. From the general, he deduced the 
particular, looking to mathematical science for his method 
and precision. His method, which, in its entirety, is known 
as Cartesianism, is summed up thus: " To attain the truth 
one must, once in his life, free himself from all received 
opinions, and reconstruct anew, and from the bottom, all 
the system of his knowledge." From Descartes 's philosophy, 
resulted the antithesis of " being " and " thought," to this 
day the task of philosophy. 

Bacon likewise banished prejudices and dogma, but dif- 
fered diametrically from Descartes in his method: " Ob- 
serve Nature, let Nature write her own record on the mind — 
all knowledge arises out of experience." His is the inductive 
method; by establishing the particular, he arrives at the 
general truths. Thus both the French and English schools 
started in revolt against medievalism and dogma; but one 
system seized upon the essential activity of the mind, the 
other upon the assumption that the mind is passive. 

Descartes 's teachings influenced the trend of thought dur- 
ing the seventeenth century, and governed the intellectual 
world; people satisfied themselves by saying " The master 
has said it. ' ' Cartesianism is presented complete in the four 
principal works of Descartes: First The Discours de la 
Methods (pour oien conduire la raison et chercher la verite 
dans les sciences), published in French, in 1637; second, the 

1 Baron of Verulam and Viscount of St. Albans, was born in London in 
1561, died at Highgate in 1626. 

2 Rene Descartes (Latinized Renatus Cartesius) was born at La Have, 
in Touraine, in 1596, and that town now glories in the name of La Haye- 
Descartes. 

186 



TRANSITION OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY 

Meditations Philosophiques — a masterpiece in research, as 
well as in dialectics; third, Les Principes; fourth, Le Traite 
de VAme — which represented a psychology more distinct and 
more realistic than anything attempted up to that time, and 
whence the famous Ethics of Spinoza 1 was to proceed. Des- 
cartes was one of the foremost mathematicians of his day. 
His Geometry was considered a standard. 

Descartes also rejected the superannuated formulas and 
the language of scholasticism, and made his doctrine acces- 
sible to all by editing a course of philosophy according to 
his principles as an accompaniment to the course taught in 
schools. He undertook, likewise, in the form of a dialogue, 
a popular exposition of the thoughts set forth in his Discours. 
In doing this, he not only furthered the propagation of his 
ideas, but assisted in the formation of the French language; 
and it was Descartes who created for the French a philosophic 
language capable of expressing the profoundest meditations. 
His Discours de la Methode is the first work written through- 
out in the grand style of the seventeenth century. 

1 Baruch Spinoza, born in Amsterdam in 1632, died 1677. He was the 
great modern expounder of Pantheism. 



CHAPTER XIV 

PORT-ROYAL 

In 1204, a convent was founded by Mahaut de Garlande, 
in the valley of Chevreuse, on the domain of Porrois. A papal 
bull, in designating the abbey, used the phrase de portu regio, 
corrupted into Porrois, from which the term Port-Royal be- 
came officially recognized. In the beginning of the seven- 
teenth century, the Abbess Angelique Arnauld, undertook to 
reform the religious order of this abbey, 1 and introduced the 
severe principles of Jansenius. 2 Duvergier de Hauranne, 
the abbot of Saint-Cyran, became the spiritual adviser of this 
religious order, and founded the society of Solitaires de Port- 
Royal — a Jansenist community — at Chevreuse. Although 
possessed of great erudition and eminent talent as a writer, 
the abbot of Saint-Cyran was content to lower himself to the 
level of the humblest intelligence, in order to teach the ele- 
mentary truths of religion. To profound wisdom, he added 
a powerful eloquence which Richelieu considered " more 
dangerous than six armies." 

At this time, a great number of Catholics maintained 
that there had been introduced into the discipline of the 
Church certain abuses contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. 
These Catholics denied the absolute power of the popes, and 
accused the Jesuits of lax morality and of aspiring to univer- 
sal domination. Jansenius and de Hauranne undertook to 
combat these conditions and to revive the " Augustinian 
tenets upon the inability of the fallen will, and upon effica- 
cious grace." Jansenius reduced to the form of doctrine the 
principles of the new reform, in a work which he entitled 

1 In 1626 this order established another convent of Port-Royal in Paris. 

2 Cornelis Jansen, or Jansenius (1585-1638), Bishop of Ypres, in Flanders, 
a Dutch Roman Catholic theologian, founder of Jansenism. 

188 



PORT-ROYAL 

Augustinus, because he claimed to have based all his argu- 
ments on the text of Saint Augustine. This famous work caused 
impassioned religious controversies during the entire century. 
The Jesuits, already at odds with Port-Royal, accused Jan- 
senius of having reproduced the doctrines of Calvin on pre- 
destination, and denounced the work, which was condemned 
by Pope Urban VIII. Commissioners, to examine the book 
of Jansenius, were appointed, who, after long researches, 
extracted the " five propositions," which have become so 
famous. These propositions are not formulated in so many 
words in the Augustinus, but according to Bossuet, are the 
very soul of the book. The following are the five proposi- 
tions: First: Some of God's commandments are impossible 
to the just who wish to observe them, and to that end exert 
all their strength. Second : In the state of fallen nature, in- 
terior grace is never resisted. Third : In the state of fallen 
nature as to merit or demerit, man need not enjoy liberty 
without necessity; it is enough for him to be free from any 
coercion. Fourth : The Semipelagians x admitted the necessi- 
ty of antecedent grace for all good works, even for the begin- 
ning of faith; but they were heretics, because they said that 
man's will could submit to grace or resist it. Fifth: It is 
a Semipelagian error to say that Christ died for all men. 
From these propositions was evolved the doctrine that free- 
dom of will was nonexistent, and that Christ did not die 
for all men, but only for the predestined. This was pushing 
the doctrine of grace to a point of resemblance with the fatal- 
ism of Calvin. 

The question of divine grace agitated all the thinkers of 
the seventeenth century. One finds its trace in the tragedies 

1 Disciples of Cassianus, of Faustus, Bishop of Riez, and other theologians 
of the Gallican Church in the fifth century who wished to conciliate the 
orthodox opinions of Augustinus with Pelagianism. Pelagianism, the 
doctrine of Pelagius (British monk of fifth century), propagated in Africa 
by his disciple Celestinus, is summed up as follows: Adam's fall from 
grace affected him alone; every man will always be born innocent as 
Adam was before his fall; death is not the consequence of sin, but of the 
natural order; it lies in everyone's power to attain salvation by following 
the teachings of Christ. The Pelagian believed that man is "morally 
well," the Semipelagians that he is "morally sick," and Saint Augustine, 
that he is "morally dead." 

189 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

of Corneille and Racine, and in the letters of Madame de 
Sevigne. The Solitaires of Port-Royal devoted the greater 
part of their lives to its discussion. Jansenius maintained 
further that ecclesiastical jurisdiction belongs to the whole 
church, and that it should be exercised not only by the Holy 
See, but by councils — a kind of Christian Parliament, in 
which the popes have only the right of presidency. 1 

The five propositions were submitted to Pope Innocent X, 
and after two years of discussion were condemned by the 
papal bull, Cum occasione impressionis libri. The Church of 
France was divided between the Jansenists and their oppo- 
nents, the latter led principally by the 'Jesuits After the 
imprisonment of Saint-Cyran 2 by Richelieu, Antoine Arnauld, 
the celebrated controversialist, called " the great Arnauld/ ' 
became the head of the Jansenists. In the society of the So- 
litaires there were many distinguished scholars, theologians, 
and moralists: Lemaistre de Sacy, Lancelot, Nicole, Nicolas 
Fontaine, Singlin, De Sericourt, Arnauld d'Andilly, and 
others. These men lived on a farm called Les Granges, de- 
pendent on the abbey. They were not bound by any vow or 
united among themselves by any rule. They utilized their 
time acording to their capacities. The great Arnauld (An- 
toine) was the invincible, uncompromising, never failing 
scholar of them all. His friend Nicole, told him one day, 
that he (Nicole) was exhausted, and that at last he wished 
to rest from his long labors. " You, rest! " Arnauld said 
to him. " Well, will you not have all eternity to rest in " ? 
Nicole taught philosophy and the humanities, and became one 
of the most distinguished professors of the Petites Ecoles 
(little schools), opened by the Solitaires for the instruction 
of the young, and where Racine was a student. 

Arnauld and Nicole spread reform by means of their 
writings. Nicole's famous Essais de morale, were called by 

1 The Gallican doctrine does not place infallibility (which means that the 
Pope is divinely guarded from all errors in questions of faith and morals), 
in the Pope alone, but in the entire episcopal body united to its chief; 
whereas the ultramontanes consider the Pope to be the authority of all 
jurisdiction in the Church, and superior to the councils. 

2 In 1638 Saint-Cyran was confined in the dungeon of St. Vincent until 
1643, the year of his death. 

190 



PORT-ROYAL 

Voltaire a masterpiece. Madame de Sevigne wrote about them 
to her daughter: "lam reading again his (Nicole's) great 
book. I should like to make it into a bouillon in order to 
swallow it." Often the Solitaires left their studious occupa- 
tions, and, turning to manual labor, became wine-growers, la- 
borers, gardeners, cobblers, carpenters. M. de la Riviere, an 
old and distinguished soldier, protected the forests of Port- 
Royal, and passed his time there praying, reading, and medi- 
tating. The famous duelist, M. de la Petitiere, made shoes for 
the nuns ; the Baron de Pontchateau was a gardener, and Le 
Maistre cut wheat with the day laborers. This society, com- 
posed of men of all conditions, formed without civil or reli- 
gious obligations, obeying no common chief, lived in the most 
perfect harmony. Lords and ladies of the court — people who 
aspired the same repose without wishing to renounce entirely 
their visits to the world — came to establish themselves about 
the abbey and Les Granges : the Duchess de Longueville, the 
Duchess de Luynes, the Duchess de Liancourt, Madame de 
Sevigne, the Prince de Conti, brother of the great Conde. 
It is said of him that after his conversion he showed such a 
submission to divine will, that it almost frightened his fam- 
ily ; and that his children hid the story of Abraham from him, 
fearing lest he might at length wish to imitate the sacrifice 
of Isaac. 

The Jansenists were supported by the majority of the 
members of Parliament, 1 by some bishops, and men of high 
rank and talent, but they were assailed by the Sorbonne, and 
struggled against the attacks of the Jesuits. Hence arose, in 
1656, the celebrated Lettres Provinciates of Pascal. The suc- 
cess of the Provinciates secured to the Jansenists the favor 
of public opinion, and delayed their fall. The respite 
accorded them, however, was not long, and Port-Royal was 
approaching its destruction when it was saved by an extra- 
ordinary personage — the Duchess de Longueville (Anne Ge- 
nevieve de Bourbon-Conde, of royal blood), heroine of the 
Fronde, born in the prison of Vincennes in 1619. After 
the peace of the Fronde, she saw herself abandoned by the 

1 ParJement, before 1789, a court of superior judicature which judged 
without appeal. 

191 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

world, and threw herself into the arms of religion with all 
the ardor which she had formerly shown for politics or for 
romantic adventures. She took M. de Sacy as instructor, 
and submitted herself to his severe counsels with great docil- 
ity. 1 When the time of persecution came for Port-Royal, 
she was active in the service of the Solitaires. She concealed 
in her home Arnauld and Nicole, and their eccentricities some- 
times added to her penitence. For example: the great Ar- 
nauld carried good comradeship and freedom from convention- 
ality even to the point of taking off his garters in the evening, 
while sitting by the fireplace in the presence of the Princess ; 
" which made her suffer a little," says Madame de Se- 
vigne. After two years of effort and negotiations, Madame 
de Longueville succeeded in triumphing over the Pope, 
Louis XIV, and the Jesuits. Port-Royal obtained permission 
to repeople its monastery, to reopen its schools and reunite 
its scattered Solitaires (1668). The same virtues, the same 
piety, the same austerities were renewed. But with the death 
of the Princess in 1679, disappeared the only protector of the 
Jansenists in favor with Louis XIV, who regarded Port Royal 
with ill-will. After a series of persecutions the society was 
forcibly dissolved toward the end of this reign. A bull of the 
Pope suppressed the monastery, and the King caused the 
house, the church, and the farm of Les Granges, as well as the 
neighboring habitations to be destroyed (1710). The influence 
of Port-Royal continued, and Jansenism 2 had some adherents 
in France until the nineteenth century 

The history of Port-Royal is important in the literary his- 
tory of the seventeenth century, for this celebrated period 
included within its scope men eminent both by their genius 
and their virtues, and produced works on religion, morality, 
logic, and grammar, which exercised a powerful influence, 
religious and literary, upon this memorable epoch. But the 
inflexible, unpitying doctrines of the Solitaires in regard to 
grace and predestination elicited the following from Bos- 

1 "The true crown of Madame de Longueville," says Sainte-Beuve, 
" which we must all the more revere in her in so far as she did not per- 
ceive it, in so far as she covered it, as it were, with her hands, in so far 
as she lowered it and hid it — is the crown of humility." 

2 At the present day Jansenism is continued in Holland. 

192 



PORT-ROYAL 

suet, although sharing many of their views: " they are men 
who hold men's consciences captive under very unjust rigors, 
who can endure no weakness, who always drag hell behind 
them, who cause virtue to appear too severe, the Gospel ex- 
cessive, Christianity impossible." 

PASCAL 

Blaise Pascal, born at Clermont in 1623, was one of the 
greatest French writers and philosophers. He was also an 
illustrious mathematician and physicist. At the age of twelve 
he is said to have formulated without the help of any book 
Euclid 's thirty-second proposition in geometry ; at sixteen, he 
wrote a treatise on conic sections which surprised Descartes; 
when eighteen, he invented a calculating machine. We owe to 
him the laws of the specific gravity of the air, the equilibrium 
of liquids, the arithmetical triangle, and the calculation of 
probabilities, the principle of the hydraulic press, and the the- 
ory of the cycloid. He was a profound moralist, a subtle and 
vigorous dialectician, a great orator, and finally, a great poet 
in the Pensees, because of an imagination now somber and 
tragic, now inspired by faith and illumined by hope. Des- 
cartes had created the philosophic language and style; but 
eloquent philosophy, without ceasing to be really philosophic, 
dates from Pascal. He held that no system of philosophy 
solves the enigma of life, because every system perceives but 
one side of our nature, and all systems destroy one another: 
nature puzzles the Pyrrhonists and reason puzzles the dog- 
matists. One day, at the bridge of Neuilly, Pascal was the 
victim of a runaway accident, as a result of which, it is said, 
he had hallucinations which often made him see an abyss 
beside him ready to engulf him. He retired to Port-Royal, 
where he lived an ascetic life. 

In consequence of a dispute between Arnauld and the 
Jesuits on the questions de facto et de jure in the proposi- 
tions contained in the Augustinus, Arnauld was condemned 
by the Sorbonne. Blaise Pascal, at the solicitations of his 
friends accepted the task of publicly defending Port-Royal 
against the Jesuits, and published, from 1656 to 1657, eighteen 
anonymous letters, the comprehensive title of which is Lettres 
14 193 



/ 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ecrites par Louis de Mont alt e a un Provincial de ses amis et 
aux Reverends Peres Jesuites sur le sujet de la Morale et de la 
Politique de ces Peres (Letters written by Louis de Montalte 
to one of his friends in the Provinces, and to the Reverend 
Jesuit Fathers, on the subject of the Morals and the Politics 
of these Fathers). In the first Provinciate, Pascal treats the 
difficult question of grace. Beginning with the fourth letter, 
he carries the fight against the Jesuits on another ground. 
Nevertheless, this masterpiece, which fixed the French lan- 
guage and has remained an inimitable model, was not a work 
of predilection on the part of Pascal. He was silently pre- 
paring the materials for a great work which would demon- 
strate the truth and the greatness of Christianity, but which 
death did not permit him to finish, and whose scattered ele- 
ments, published under the title of Pensees, sufficed to assure 
for their author the admiration of posterity. 

The crude memoranda of Pascal's Pensees are to-day in 
the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris, open to the public. Care- 
fully pasted on sheets of paper, they are bound in one volume, 
which is one of the most curious of that wonderful collection. 
It is due to the work of Cousin, Faugere, Sainte-Beuve, Astie, 
and Havet, that the plan which inspired Pascal to make the 
detached sketches was brought to light. 

We recall i: the abyss of Pascal " (in allusion to the run- 
away accident mentioned above), in order to characterize cer- 
tain social or moral problems which frighten by their depth 
those who seek to sound them. " The grain of sand " of 
Pascal, in the Pensees (an allusion to Cromwell's death), has 
become an original locution to express the idea that minute 
causes can engender great results. Here are a few extracts 
from the Pensees: 

<l Thus all our life passes. We seek rest while combating 
some obstacles ; and if we have surmounted them rest becomes 
unbearable/ ' 

" We are sometimes better corrected by the sight of evil 
than by the example of good ; and it is well to accustom one- 
self to profit by the bad, since it is so common, while the 
good is so rare. ' ' 

" For, finally, what is man in nature? A Nothing in re- 
gard to the Infinite, a Whole in regard to nothing, a medium 

194 



PORT-ROYAL 

between nothing and all. Infinitely far from understanding 
the extremes, the end of things and the principle of them are 
invincibly hidden from him in an impenetrable secret ; equally 
incapable of seeing the Nothing whence he is drawn and the 
Infinite in which he is engulfed. ' ' 



CHAPTER XV 

THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

With the advent of such masters as Racine, Boileau, 
Moliere, and La Fontaine, French literature, from being 
precieuse, burlesque, and courtly, became classical, 1 a term 
used with different acceptations, but which means here a 
combination of rationalism with a sense of the aesthetic. The 
classical period embraces two centuries, and has produced the 
greatest works the French possess. 



RACINE 

'Jean Racine was born in 1639, at La Ferte-Milon. Or- 
phaned at the age of four, he was under the guardianship of a 
grandmother and aunt, both ardent Jansenists, who sent him 
to Port-Royal, where he was reared under the influence and 
care of Le Maistre, Nicole, Hamon, and Lancelot. Racine 
showed from his earliest years a very strong taste for poetry, 
and especially for the tragic poets. Often he was lost in the 
forests of the abbey with a copy of Euripides in his hand. 
His greed for knowledge took him everywhere in search of 
books, which he pored over in secret. The Greek romance 
of the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea fell into his hands. 
He was reading it eagerly, when Claude Lancelot, " le chef 
de la secte hellenique, ' ' caught him in the act, tore the book 
from him and threw it into the fire. A second copy met the 
same fate. Racine bought a third ; in order to insure its con- 

1 In the Nodes Atticce of Aulus Gellius the word classicus is applied to 
writers of distinction and merit. The most remarkable classical epochs 
of literature are: the centuries of Pericles, of Augustus, of Leo X (or de 
Medici), and of Louis XIV. 

196 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

tents from the flames, he learned it by heart and carried it to 
Lancelot saying: " You may burn this one like the others.' * 
Port-Royal intended that their pupil should be a lawyer ; but 
scarcely had Racine finished his course in philosophy at 
the college of Harcourt (to-day the Lycee Saint-Louis), when 
he entered the literary world with an ode on the marriage 
of the King. This poem, entitled La Nymphe de la Seine 
(on the marriage of Louis XIV with Marie-Therese), 
brought him, by recommendation of Chapelain, a gift of 
one hundred louis and a pension of six hundred livres with 
the title of homme de lettres. This was a public scandal in 
the eyes of the Solitaires of Port-Royal who had vainly 
warned him by letter and threats of excommunication to stop 
writing. 

In order to turn the young man aside from poetry, he was 
led to hope for a benefice, and was sent to Uzes to his uncle, 
the vicar Antoine Sconin, who set him to studying theology ; 
but his true vocation conquered and he returned to Paris. 
In 1662 he composed a piece sur la convalescence du rot, 
which gained for him a presentation at court. Les Freres 
Ennemis, composed at Uzes, was produced and met with some 
success; but much more successful was Alexandre, given in 
1665, when Racine was twenty-five years old. At Paris he 
sought and obtained illustrious and useful friendships with 
La Fontaine, Boileau, and Moliere. This was the epoch when 
the four friends met at the fashionable cabarets, where men 
of letters, such as Chapelle, Furetiere, and the great lords, the 
Dukes de Vivonne, de Nantouillet, and others eagerly sought 
their society. Racine's relations with Moliere were of brief 
duration ; but while ceasing to be intimate, the mutual esteem 
of these two great men was undiminished. The friendship 
of Boileau and Racine remained unchanged during forty 
years. At first Racine was only a successful imitator of 
Corneille; the beautiful passages of La Theba'ide and of 
Alexandre may be characterized as strong impressions pro- 
duced by great models on a young man destined, in his turn, 
to become a master of his art. It was in writing Andromaque 
(1667) that Racine found himself. He had just caused 
Alexandre to be played when he became the friend of Boileau, 
three years older than himself, who had already published 

197 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

several of his own satires. " I have a surprising facility in 
making my verses," the young tragic author naively said. 
" I wish to teach you to make them with difficulty/' answered 
Boileau, " and you have enough talent to learn soon." 

Andromaque was the result of this new effort, and the 
true debut of Racine. He was henceforth irrevocably com- 
promised in the cause of the stage. Nicole, while attacking 
Desmarets, wrote with all the rigor of Port-Royal: " A maker 
of romances and a theatrical poet are public poisoners, not 
of bodies but of souls." Racine in defense of dramatic art 
wrote two letters which were so bitter, so incisive, and so in- 
sulting to Port-Royal, that Boileau prevented him from 
publishing the second. In 1668 he staged Les Plaideurs, 
which had been requested of him by his friends, and partly 
composed during the repasts they often had in common in 
the famous cabaret of the Mouton blanc. " I put into it," 
said Racine, " only a few barbarous words of the chicanery 
I remembered in a suit at law, which neither I nor my judges 
have ever well understood." Les Plaideurs, composed of 
reminiscences partly from the " Wasps," by Aristophanes 
and partly from Racine's own lawsuit when he was prior of 
Epinay, is an amusing satire of life in the law courts; of the 
judges, ridiculed in the characteristics of Perrin Dandin; of 
the litigants, personified in Chicaneau and the Countess of 
Pimbesche; of the lawyers, characterized in Petit- Jean and 
l'lntime, who in their pleadings, give way to bombastic and 
pedantic eloquence. After the first failure of the play, the 
royal players one day risked a performance before the King. 
Louis XIV was struck by it, and believed that he did not 
dishonor his dignity or his taste by bursts of laughter so great 
that the courtiers were astonished. The delighted players, 
on leaving Versailles, returned straight to Paris, and went 
to awaken Racine. Three coaches coming in the night, in a 
street where coaches are rarely seen at any time, awakened 
the neighborhood. People went to the windows and, since 
it was known that a censor had made a great uproar against 
the comedy of the Plaideurs, no one doubted in the least that 
the poet who had dared to ridicule the judges in the public 
theater would be punished. On the morrow all Paris believed 
him to be in prison. On the contrary, he triumphed with 

198 



THE CLASSIC FKENCH SCHOOL 

Britannicus 1 (1669); whereupon the King stopped dancing 
at the court balls for fear of resembling Nero. 

Berenice was a contest between Corneille and Racine for 
the entertainment of the Duchess of Orleans, Henrietta of 
England; and Racine won, without much glory. Berenice 
was played at the Hotel de Bourgogne by a famous actress, 
Mademoiselle Champmesle, who also played an important role 
in the life of the great Racine. 

In 1672 Bajazet was represented and showed a marked 
contrast with Berenice; from ancient history and Rome, the 
scene passed to contemporary history and Constantinople. 
Racine's reputation was constantly growing; he had staged 
Mirthridate and Ipliigenie. Phedre was produced in 1677, 
and an intrigue of the great lords at first caused it to fail. 
Pradon, a tragic poet, who pretended to rival Racine, acting 
on the advice of his protectors, composed a play which was 
to be performed in opposition to the one Racine was known to 
be writing, and which had Phedre for its subject. Boileau 
riddled Pradon with his satire. A cabal had been set in 
motion to secure the triumph of Pradon and the fall of 
Racine. 2 The plotters, led by the Duchess de Bouillon, rented 
in advance for several representations the two theaters where 
the two plays were to be given. Pradon 's play had an im- 
mense audience, while Racine's was enacted to empty seats. 
However, from the time the friends of Pradon ceased to pro- 
duce his play, the public went in crowds to witness Racine's 
masterpiece, but chagrin and wounded pride had done their 
work in the poet's soul: he abandoned dramatic art in the full 
glory of his career at thirty-seven years of age. He reconciled 
himself with the pious Port-Royalists, and wished to become 
a Chartreux; but his confessor turned him away from his 
design, and his friends married him off to Catherine Romanet. 
Madame Racine was an excellent person, modest and devoted, 
but prosaic, who never went to the theater and scarcely knew 
the titles of her husband's plays. She brought him something 
of a fortune. In addition to this, the king had given the great 

1 Britannicus is an answer to the critics who reproached Racine for 
writing only of love. (Although love is not totally absent from the play.) 

2 It has been said that Racine's manuscript was taken from him. Ra- 
cine had previously accused Pradon of plagiarism. 

199 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

poet a pension, and Colbert had named him treasurer at 
Moulins * Racine had seven children. He devoted his life 
to them with pious solicitude, but when his children were ill, 
he said with the anxiety of paternal tenderness: " Why did 
I not become a Chartreux "? The Memoires of his father, 
written by his son Louis, depict Racine in all the austere 
charm of his domestic life. " He left everything to come to 
see us," writes this filial biographer. " An equerry of the 
duke came one day to tell him that he was expected to dinner 
at the home of Conde. * I shall not have the honor to go,' 
said he; 'it is more than a week since I have seen my wife 
and children, who are happy in the anticipation of eating a 
very fine carp with me to-day. I cannot help but dine with 
them/ And when the equerry insisted, he had the carp 
brought in: ' Judge for yourself if I can disappoint these 
poor children who have planned to entertain me, and would 
have no more pleasure if they ate this dish without me.' J 
" He was born tender-hearted," adds Louis Racine. " He 
was tender toward God when he returned to Him, and from 
the day he went back to those who, in his childhood, had 
taught him to know God, he was tender toward them without 
reserve. He was so all his life to his friends, to his wife and 
his children." 

The duties of historiographers to the king, titles which 
both Racine and Boileau received from Louis XIV, drew the 
friends already so intimate into closer communion. Racine 
and Boileau were preparing to depart with the king for the 
campaign of 1677 ; but the besieged cities opened their gates 
before the poets had left Paris. " How is it that you did 
not have the curiosity to see a siege? " the king asked them 
on his return. ' ' The trip was not long. " ' ' It is true, Sire, ' ' 
answered Racine, who always was the more skillful courtier 
of the two, " but our tailors were too slow. We ordered 
campaigning clothes; when they brought them, the fortified 
places which your majesty was besieging were taken." The 
following year they were obliged to accompany the king on 



1 Louis XIV granted frequent benefits to men of letters. Racine re- 
ceived almost fifty thousand livres from him, and was named the his- 
toriographer of the king. Boileau received the same title. 

200 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

his campaigns, and their awkwardness on horse, their ignorance 
of military things, cilled forth many epigrams and anecdotes 
at their expense. Finally, Boileau, who suffered from ill 
health, and was of a morose disposition, remained in Paris. 
His friend wrote to him constantly, sometimes from the camp, 
sometimes from Versailles, whither he returned with the king. 
The correspondence of the two friends have a great literary 
interest. 

After twelve years of cessation from dramatic work, 
Madame de Maintenon begged Racine to compose for the 
young ladies of Saint-Cyr " some sort of moral or historical 
poem from which love might be entirely banished." His 
compliance with this request enriched French literature with 
the delicate elegy of Esther (1689). "Madame de Main- 
tenon was charmed with its invention and execution, " said 
Madame de la Fayette. " The play represented, in a 
way, the fall of Madame de Montespan and Madame de 
Maintenon 's own elevation; the difference being that Esther 
was a little younger and less ' precieuse ' in point of piety." 
The brilliant success of this play inspired the poet to write 
another masterpiece, Athalie (1691), drawn from the same 
source. The young ladies of Saint-Cyr, in the uniform of the 
house, performed it quite simply at Versailles before Louis 
XIV and Madame de Maintenon, in a room without a stage. 
When the players acted it in Paris, it was pronounced cold 
and was not a success. Racine foresaw failure, but Boileau 
said to him : " I am sure that this is your best work, the pub- 
lic will return to it. " 1 This beautiful inspiration into which 
the poet put his heart, his intelligence, his faith, and his art, 
is considered one of the most perfect plays. His Cantiques 
spirituels, composed in 1694, are called the Chant du Cygne 
(Song of the Swan), for they were his last verses. 

The tragedies of Racine may be divided into three classes : 
the first class includes plays borrowed from the drama of 
' ' Euripides " ; his historical tragedies form the second class ; 
in the third class are his tragedies inspired by the Bible. 
Madame de Maintenon had requested Racine to make a com- 

1 The public did return to it, but it was fifty years later, after Racine's 
death. 

201 






THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

position concerned with the misery of the people as result- 
ing from a prolonged war — a memoire which she wished to 
present to Louis XIV. But the king, who allowed no com- 
mentaries of any sort, was discontented with the audacity of 
Racine — " who, because he could make verses, imagined him- 
self able to govern a State," and he made it plain that he 
wished no longer to see the poet. Racine, who sincerely loved 
the king, was much affected by this order. He was already 
an invalid; his illness increased, and he died a short time 
afterwards, in 1699. 

" Racine," says Faguet, " is our greatest tragic author, 
as Moliere is the greatest comic one. There has been an 
alternation in France between the glory of Racine and that 
of Corneille, and, according to the epoch, people prefer the 
one and believe themselves obliged to disparage the other. 
Actually, Racine is the favorite. It is incontestable that he 
at least deserves to be called one of the greatest French tragic 
authors, and one of the four or five greatest tragic writers of 
all literature." 

" Corneille," says Fleury, " depicted persons who mas- 
tered their passions ; Racine depicted those who allowed them- 
selves to be governed by them. Instead of exciting admiration 
by grandeur, Racine excited compassion for suffering." He 
made himself the delineator of tender sentiments, especially of 
love ; he is the painter of love, 1 such as he conceives it, violent, 
impetuous, jealous, often criminal: " C'est Venus toute en- 
tiere a sa proie attachee." 2 (Phedre.) 

Larroumet notes that Racine made jealousy the dominant 
motive in four of his plays. " The greatest misery which 
love can call forth is jealousy. The cries of rage which 
Roxane 3 and Phedre utter are without equal in f orcefulness 

1 In a poem, A Racine, written for the celebration of the anniversary 
of Racine's birth, at the Theatre-Francais, in 1888, George Lefevre calls 
him Poete des amants (poet of lovers). "This eternal question of love," 
said Napoleon, ".with its sweetish tone and its fastidious background, was 
the sole occupation of everybody, the lot of idle society. It is therefore 
not exactly Racine's fault if his works are impregnated with love, but 
rather the fault of the times." 

2 "It is Venus in her entirety clinging to her prey." 

3 " Bajazet est une grande tuerie" (Bajazet is a great slaughter), wrote 
Madame de Sevign6. 

202 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

and truth. Roxane is the embodiment of jealousy whom the 
cause of her deception instills with the thirst of blood: 

Dans ma juste fureur observant le perfide, 

Je saurai le surprendre avec son Atalide 

Et, d'un meme poignard les unissant tous deux, 

Les percer l'un et l'autre, et moi-meme apres eux. 1 

(bajazet.) 

It is the woman who plays the principal role in Racine's 
plays ; one speaks of the heroines of Racine and of the heroes 
of Corneille, for according to Marivaux, style has sex. La 
Bruyere's simple criticism was: " Corneille is more moral, 
Racine more natural/ ' 

With Racine, indeed, the dramatic motive was not admira- 
tion, but tenderness. Thus he turns us back upon ourselves; 
his art gains in truth what it loses in loftiness. In spite of 
the differences which distinguish him from his predecessor, 
there is between them a resemblance which their epoch im- 
posed on them. Both are spiritual in the highest degree; 
both seek the source of their power exclusively in moral 
nature. They disdain or ignore the exterior appearance, the 
material movement of the stage, the prepared color of history. 
Larroumet writes: " The best eulogy one can give the 
tragedies of Racine is that it is impossible to imagine them 
otherwise than they are. The facts could not proceed in any 
other manner; one finds nothing to add, nothing to retract. 
This art gives the illusion of being life itself. 

"Both Corneille and Racine have attained the highest 
degree of tragic genius, but Corneille looked to the heroic, 
that is to say, the exceptional; Racine regarded humanity as 
it was. Thus they represent the two supreme forms of tragic 
art — the one idealistic, the other realistic.' ' 

Although Racine in his conceptions is less sublime than 
Corneille, although he reduces his personages to more human 
and more natural proportions, his characters are ennobled, 

1 In my justified rage watching the unfaithful one; 
I shall know how to surprise him with his Atalide 
And, joining them with the same dagger, 
Pierce them both, and myself after them. 
203 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

not by moral perfections, but by the free development of their 
nature; thereby they attain a higher degree of being — that is 
to say, of beauty. Within this marvelous sphere, peopled by 
kings and heroes, the air is less heavy on those noble brows; 
the vulgar necessities of life no longer oppress the breast; 
hearts beat with no other obstacle than the shock of rival 
passions or the impassable limits of human conditions. The 
passions of the court become the passions of humanity, and 
the work of Racine will remain imperishable like them. But 
it is especially by his style that Racine envelopes his heroes 
with an ideal magnificence. Here one is tempted to hold to 
the opinion of Voltaire, who suggested that all criticism of 
the plays be confined to a line written at the bottom of each 
page, thus : ' ' Beautiful, sublime, harmonious ! ' ' 

ANDROMAQUE 

After the capture of Troy, Andromache, the widow of 
Hector, and her son Astyanax have become the slaves of 
Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, and son of Achilles. Pyrrhus, 
affianced to Hermione, daughter of Menelaus and Helen, 
defers his marriage from day to day, because he has fallen 
in love with Andromache. The Greek generals, conquerors of 
Ilium, have charged Orestes, who loves Hermione, to recapture 
Astyanax, whom they would put to death. Pyrrhus, angered 
because Andromache wishes to remain true to her vows to her 
dead husband, threatens to deliver Astyanax, if she does not 
consent to marry him. Andromache finding him inflexible de- 
cides to wed him to save her son, but decides also to kill her- 
self after the nuptials. The news of this marriage infuriates 
Hermione ; she commands Orestes to kill Pyrrhus at the altar, 
promising him her hand as reward. Orestes consents, and 
Pyrrhus is slain, but when Hermione hears that her lover is 
dead, she repulses the murderer with horror, and kills herself 
on the body of Pyrrhus. Orestes then becomes the victim of 
the avenging Furies. 

BRITANNICUS 

The subject of this play is borrowed from the thirteenth 
book of the Annals of Tacitus. The poet depicts Nero upon 

204 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

the threshold of crime, still hesitating between good and evil, 
between Burrhus and Narcissus. Agrippina, his mother, 
thirsting for power, has formed the design of marrying Junia 
to Britannicus, son of the Emperor Claudius and adopted 
brother of Nero, in order to gain for herself the affection of 
this young prince, and to make of him her support in time 
of need against Nero himself. Nero, in order to foil this plan, 
has Junia carried off, and falls in love with her at first 
sight. He orders Britannicus to renounce his love; on his 
refusal he has him arrested, and plans his death. The in- 
tervention of Agrippina seems to disarm the anger of the 
Emperor, but in reality adds to it a new degree of hypocritical 
hatred. Burrhus, his governor, brings him back for a moment 
to better sentiments, but Narcissus prevails upon him to con- 
summate the crime. Britannicus is accordingly invited to a 
banquet, in the course of which he is poisoned. This tragedy, 
which, in the judgment of La Harpe, " unites the art of 
Tacitus to the art of Virgil, and depth of thought to purity 
of style," is in the eyes of Voltaire " the play of con- 
noisseurs. ' ' 

BERENICE 

Berenice treats of the love of the Emperor Titus for the 
beautiful Jewess Berenice, whom for reasons of State he 
cannot marry. The brilliant lines in which Berenice describes 
the greatness of Titus express the splendor of the court life 
of Louis XIV. 

De cette nuit Phenice, as-tu vu la splendeur? 

Tes yeux ne sont-ils pas tout pleins de sa grandeur? 

Ces flambeaux, ces buchers, cette nuit ennammee (etc.). 1 

Racine did not forget that these lines were to be spoken 
before the young king — " a Titus to many of the women of 
the court whose fondest wish would have been to be his 
Berenice. ' ' It is the drama of the court. It is the cult of the 
royal personage. The individuality of great men was often 
suppressed to conform to the ideas of that monarch whose 

1 Saw you, Phenice, the splendor of this night? 
Are not your eyes filled with his greatness? 
Those torches, those funeral piles, that lurid night. 
205 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

absolutism governed genius as it dominated the intellectual 
life of the people. Racine, Corneille, even Moliere, were sub- 
jected to it. The poetic freedom of the great dramatists was 
still more curtailed by the enforced adherence to the so-called 
Aristotelian unities: unity of place, of time, and of action. 
It was an observance imposed upon them by a dictum of the 
French Academy approved by Louis XIV. To ignore it 
meant failure; yet Corneille 's Discours des trois unites 
plainly shows how great a hindrance it was to dramatic 
development. 1 

PHEDRE 

Phaedra, pursued by the anger of Venus, has fallen in love 
with Hippolytus, son of her husband and another woman. 
In her hopelessness, she wishes to die; but hearing that her 
husband is dead she discloses her sentiments to Hippolytus, 
who repulses her with horror. Suddenly it is learned that her 
husband, Theseus, is returning. Phaedra, in despair, lets her 
nurse accuse Hippolytus of having made the declaration 
which she herself had made to him. Theseus, too credulous, 
banishes his son from his palace, and begs Neptune to punish 
him; but, moved by the distress of Phaedra, he soon repents 
of his imprudent order. It is too late; the horses of Hip- 
polytus, frightened by a marine monster, have run away and 
crushed his body on the rocks. Phaedra is silent. The play 
is an admirable portrayal of a woman's character. It includes 
a great number of beautiful verses : 

Et l'avare Acheron ne lache point sa proie. 2 
Ainsi que la vertu, le crime a ses degrSs. 8 
Le jour n'est pas plus pur que le fond de mon cceur. 4 

BAJAZET 

This is a Turkish play, the mise-en-scene of which treats 
of a plot in the Seraglio, related to Racine by the French 

1 Lessing's Hamburgische Dramaturgie. 

2 And hungry Acheron relinquishes not his prey. 
8 Like virtue, crime has its degrees. 

• Daylight is no purer than the bottom of my heart. 
206 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

Ambassador for the Orient. The persons who figure in it had 
scarcely died when Racine put them on the stage. The 
Sultan Amurat goes to besiege Babylon; during his absence, 
the favorite Sultana, Roxane, in league with the Grand Vizier 
Acomat, plots to enthrone the young brother of the Sultan, 
Bajazet, with whom she is in love, and to have Amurat 
assassinated upon his return. Bajazet, who loves another 
woman, resists and loses time. Amurat returns, and puts to 
death the guilty ones, excepting Acomat, who succeeds in 
escaping. The verse spoken by Acomat is often quoted : 

Nourri dans le harem, j'en connais les detours. 1 

ESTHER 

The Jewess Esther has been chosen among a thousand 
rivals to become the wife of Ahasuerus, King of Persia, who 
has repudiated his wife, the proud Vashti. By the advice 
of Mordecai, her uncle, Esther has concealed from the king 
her origin and her race. Faithful to the God of Abraham, 
she worships him in secret; she has gathered about her some 
young Israelitish women whom she instructs in the law of 
the Lord, and in the midst of whom she freely bewails the 
misfortunes of Jerusalem. New misfortunes threaten the 
people of God. An enemy of Israel, the Amalekite Aman, 
has forced from the king an edict that all the Jews scattered 
through the empire be put to death. Esther presents herself 
before Ahasuerus; she solicits and obtains the favor of re- 
ceiving the king at her table; Aman is to be present at the 
feast. It is in the presence of the persecutor of the Jews that 
she casts herself at the feet of the king and implores grace 
for her people, at the same time declaring herself to be a 
Jewess. Touched by the tones of the queen, and enlightened 
concerning the sinister projects of his favorite Aman, 
Ahasuerus sends him to the gibbet which had been prepared 
for Mordecai, repeals the edict of proscription, and puts an 
end to the captivity of the Jews. 

The choruses are an innovation which Racine introduced 
into his plays, Esther and Athalie, in imitation of the Greek 

1 Brought up in the harem, I know its by-ways. 
207 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

tragedies, reviving thus the most beautiful inspirations of 
the prophets — and they are masterpieces of lyric poetry. In 
the ancient tragedies the chorus represented the crowd 
(people) moralizing on the events. In Esther the young 
Israelites who compose the chorus participate in the action: 
they suffer, they tremble, they hope, and their chants express 
their sorrow and their enthusiasm. 



ATHALIE 

The subject of Athalie is taken from the Bible, in the 
Fourth Book of Kings. Athaliah, daughter of Achab and of 
Jezebel, King and Queen of Israel, had married Jehoram, King 
of Judah. Their son, Ochosias, reigned but one year. At his 
death, Athaliah caused the children of Ochosias, her grand- 
children, to be massacred, in order to get possession of the 
throne of Judah. One only of these children, Joas, escaped 
her cruelty, and was reared secretly in the temple by Josabet, 
wife of the High Priest. Athaliah, frightened by a dream, 
enters the temple of the Jews. There she sees a child re- 
sembling the one whom a prophetic dream has shown her as 
her enemy; it is Joas. She wishes to know who he is, to see 
him, to question him; she wants the High Priest to put him 
into her hands. Joas secretly arms all the priests, all the 
Levites; and when the queen, lured by an equivocal promise, 
presents herself to take possession of the treasures of the 
temple and the child who terrifies her, the revolted priests 
seize her, drag her out, and throttle her in the name of young 
Joas, whom they proclaim King of Judah, and legitimate heir 
of his father, Ochosias. 

In Athalie was reached the culmination of dramatic 
ability : the temple in Jerusalem which is the scene of action, 
the tenor of the plot, all lend to this last masterpiece of Ra- 
cine^ an atmosphere mysterious and grand, augmented by the 
majesty of the language. Lyricism, the integral part of the 
Greek tragedies, resumes its place in the choruses, which 
spring from the nature of the drama itself. 



208 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

BOILEAU 

Nicolas Boileau Despreaux 1 was born in Paris in 1636. 
Son of a magistrate, born of a long line of lawyers, he was 
destined for the study of law, which he soon deserted for 
literary pursuits. He was an ethical and didactic writer, 
very much preoccupied with questions of style and of versifica- 
tion; furious in his criticisms of bad taste, and a scourge of 
mediocre writers. His works consist of twelve epistles, twelve 
satires, and two poems — the one didactic, the other for recital. 
His verses are very well worked out; their rhythmic and 
regular form impress them easily on the mind, and a great 
number have become proverbs. The Epitres are generally 
superior to the Satires; four, especially, are masterpieces of 
their kind. The epistle on the passage of the Rhine, under 
the eyes of Louis XIV, " whom his grandeur attached to the 
bank," is a magnificent epic. The epistle to Lamoignon, in 
which the author describes the country house where he lives 
during the summer, on the banks of the Seine, between Paris 
and Rouen: the houses hollowed from the rock on the slope 
of the hills, their chimneys, with exposed masonry, rising from 
the ground ; the ' ' implanted willows, the walnut trees in- 
sulted by the passers-by " — all this forms a fresh rural pic- 
ture; and these pictures are very rare in the seventeenth 
century. We must furthermore note the indignant protest 
addressed by Boileau to Racine against the criticism of 
Phedre; and, finally, the Eulogy of Truth in his ninth 
epistle : 

Rien n'est beau que le vrai, le vrai seul est aimable; 
II doit r6gner partout, et meme dans la fable. 2 

While Racine and Moliere were giving their masterpieces 
to France, Boileau, their friend, was teaching the public to 
understand and admire them. Before his time, an uncertain 

1 He added Despreaux to his name in order to distinguish himself from 
his brothers. 

8 Nothing but Truth is beautiful, Truth alone is worthy of love, 
It should reign everywhere and even in the fable. 
De Musset changed the first line to: "Rien n'est vrai que le beau." 
(Nothing but the beautiful is true.) 
15 209 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

taste admitted in confusion the good as well as the mediocre ; 
when he appeared, there were some models, but no denned 
principles. The task of Boileau was to clear up the confused 
art of the seventeenth century ; to assign to each man and each 
work the proper rank in public esteem. It is his glory to 
have done this with an almost infallible discernment, with an 
intrepid courage; and, finally, to have crystallized his judg- 
ments in a form so apt, in a language so perfect, that no one 
will be tempted to revise, and thereby weaken, them. Com- 
mon sense and the sovereignty of reason in matters of taste 
go to make the durable merit of Boileau 's doctrine. Here is 
an element of resemblance to the other great men of his 
century. It is the spirit of Descartes transferred to poetry. 

The poetical career of Boileau may be divided into three 
periods. In the first, the satirist attacks the mediocre poets 
with all the impetuosity of youth ; he fights untiringly against 
the false standard of taste imported from Spain and Italy. 
It is at this time that he published nine satires, of which four 
are exclusively literary, while the others contain a number 
of unexpected sallies against bad writers which are the more 
stinging because of their unexpectedness. " The satires be- 
long, ' ' says Voltaire, ' ' to the first manner of this great artist 
— a manner very much inferior, it is true, to the second, but 
far superior to that of all the writers of his time, if you except 
Racine. ' ' In the second period, Boileau abandoned satire : he 
had destroyed; it was now a question of reconstructing. At 
this time appeared VArt Poetique, in which he formulated 
and coordinated the literary doctrine he had just made prev- 
alent. On this, his masterpiece in four cantos, he worked 
for five years deliberately and with the utmost care. It 
served the French as a poetical code for one and a half 
centuries, and its absolute authority was overthrown only by 
the Romanticists of the nineteenth century. In the same year 
(1674) he published the first four cantos (there are six) of 
the Lutrin 1 (Lectern) — an ingenious and elegant pleasantry, 
a masterpiece of versification worthy of a subject less shallow. 

This poetical masterpiece deals with a chorister who 
dearly loves to have himself seen by the faithful while he 

1 After La Secchia Rapita (The Rape of the Bucket) of Tassoni. 

210 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

fulfills his ecclesiastical duties. By way of a joke, it is 
planned to place in the church a large pulpit, or reading desk, 
that will hide him completely from the public. This is done 
during the night; when morning comes the furious chorister 
breaks the new desk in pieces. A dispute arises; it becomes 
a battle in which the books stacked in the shop of a neighbor- 
ing bookseller serve as projectiles. The scene is laid in Paris, 
at the Sainte-Chapelle, and in the Palais de Justice. The 
quarrel had actually taken place, and Le Lutrin was the result 
of a bet : Boileau in conversation with M. de Lamoignon held 
that the slightest circumstance might serve as a subject for 
an epic poem. " Prove it and make one on this quarrel of 
the Sainte-Chapelle," replied Lamoignon. " Why not " ? 
responded Boileau. " One ought never to challenge a fool, 
and I am sufficiently one not only to undertake it, but also 
to dedicate it to Monsieur, the First President ( Lamoignon)." 
Boileau kept his word with the result we have observed: it 
bears out his sentiments expressed in his famous Art Poe- 
tique : 

Sans la langue en un mot, l'auteur le plus divin 
Est toujours, quoi qu'il fasse, un mechant ecrivain. 1 

In the Lutrin a less aggressive spirit animated the critic; 
his mocking was more joyous. He wrote the first nine epistles ; 
the seventh, addressed to Racine, united in the highest degree 
all the qualities of excellence that assured the glory of the 
great French satirist. French criticism had only recently 
become a genre; it had not yet attained any great develop- 
ment. Boileau created the style of literary criticism in verse 
as he was also the creator of the satire and the epistle in 
France. The most remarkable of his satires are: Le Bepas 
ridicule and Les Embarras de Paris, which, however, are in- 
ferior to the satire entitled, A mon Esprit, in which he sets 
forth the problem of the satire : 

Elle seule, bravant l'orgueil et Tin justice, 
Va jusque sous le dais faire palir le vice. 2 

1 The most divine author, if he uses not the correct expression, 
In spite of all his efforts will never be but a poor writer. 

3 It (satire) alone, defying pride and injustice, 
Penetrates even into the palace to put vice to shame. 
211 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

After this work, Boileau, who had been appointed his- 
toriographer of the king along with Racine, followed Racine's 
example by interrupting his poetic labors ; during the ensuing 
sixteen years he was content with publishing the last two 
cantos of the Lutrin. He again took up his literary work in 
1693; but, less fortunate than his famous friend, he was far 
from disclosing a new genius. Here begins the third period 
of his life — that in which he produced the Ode sur la prise de 
Namur, the satires against Les Femmes, on L 'Honneur, and 
the one against L' Equivoque. Boileau never replied directly 
to any pamphlet attacking him, but when in 1687, the famous 
Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns was agitating the lit- 
erary world, Boileau took a very active part in defense of the 
ancients. It is said that during a meeting of the Academie 
Franchise, when Charles Perrault x read his poem Le Siecle de 
Louis le Grand, in which he freely abused the authors of an- 
tiquity, Boileau, angered and offended, showed his chagrin, 
and made use of his most effective weapon — satire. He wrote 
in a letter to the Marquis de Mimeure that his vexation so 
apparent on this occasion must have served Moliere as a model 
for his Misanthrope. When Perrault published his Parallele 
des Anciens et des Modernes, the Prince de Conti said: " If 
Boileau does not answer, you can assure him that I shall go 
to the Academy to write on his seat: " Thou sleepest, 
Brutus/ " The ode on the capture of Namur — designed to 
overturn Perrault 's celebration of the moderns — not sufficing, 
Boileau wrote his Reflexions sur Longin. 

The works of Boileau are the best expression of the liter- 
ary criticism of the seventeenth century; although during the 
entire century literary discussions were the fashion. In the 
salons, the sonnets of Benserade, and Voiture were discussed; 
in the Academy, Le Cid. Debates were in vogue in all the 

1 A man of wit, author of the charming Fairy Tales, reminiscent of our 
Mother Goose Stories. It is Perrault who read before the Academy a 
discourse containing these lines: 

"Que Ton peut comparer, sans crainte d'etre injuste, 
Le siecle de Louis au beau siecle d'Auguste." 
Louis XIV is said to have imitated the customs of the age of Augustus with 
respect to his court poets. Louis thought himself another Augustus, 
Boileau was his Horace. 

212 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

literary circles; the most celebrated of these debates was 
called the " Quarrel of the ancients and the moderns," the 
moderns being represented by Charles Perrault, the ancients 
by Boileau, Huet, La Fontaine. The dispute ended with the 
reconciliation of Boileau and Perrault. Boileau in his de- 
fense of the ancients, writes Lanson, as little suspected that 
he was an evolutionist as Saint Augustine thought himself a 
Cartesian when he encountered the famous formula : Je pense, 
done je suis. The quarrel was revived fifteen years later, 
when the ancients carried off the palm of victory with the 
translation of the Iliad by Madame Dacier and of Telemaque. 
by Fenelon. 

At court, Boileau retained his independence as elsewhere, 
and for thirty years enjoyed the uninterrupted favor of the 
king. Boileau, like Racine and Moliere, have been reproached 
by posterity for flattering the king, but it must be remembered 
that at this epoch there was in France a royalty cult, and it 
was only natural to praise the king. Nevertheless, this adula- 
tion did not make Boileau stoop to any sordidness; on the 
contrary he dared even at times to tell an unpleasant truth 
to the king. Louis XIV having composed some verses, showed 
them to Boileau. " Sire/' said Boileau, " nothing is im- 
possible to Your Majesty. Your Majesty has wished to make 
bad verses, and Your Majesty has entirely succeeded." 

* " M. Boileau," Racine wrote to his son, " has not only re- 
ceived from heaven a marvelous genius for satire, but he has 
likewise an excellent judgment that enables him to distinguish 
what should be lauded from what should be reproved. ' ' But 
this " marvelous genius for satire " did not affect the natural 
good- will of Boileau. "He is only cruel in verse," said 
Madame de Sevigne. Racine was vicious and bitter in dis- 
cussion ; Boileau always retained his sangfroid. His opinions 
often anticipated those of posterity. One day the king asked 
him who was the greatest poet of his reign : ' ' Moliere, Sire, ' ' 
answered Boileau, without hesitation. " I should not have 
thought so," answered the king, somewhat astonished, " but 
you understand it better than I." 

Boileau lived the greater part of his life at Auteuil, in 
a house which he owed to the bounty of Louis XIV, and which 
was a favorite rendezvous of the great celebrities of the day. 

213 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Twice a week these great men met, and among their favorite 
places were the famous cabarets, 1 the Mouton blanc and the 
Pomme de pin, the taverns Villon and Regnier are supposed to 
have frequented. Here these men of genius exchangd their 
brilliant ideas over the flowing cup and gay repasts. 

It is related that on one occasion, Moliere, Chapelle, 
Boileau, Racine, and La Fontaine, were assembled at Auteuil. 
They were dining and drinking, and the wise Boileau lost 
his wits with the rest of them. Wine had put them in a most 
serious frame of mind; reflection on the miseries of life, and 
the maxim of the ancients that the highest happiness is not 
to have been born at all — or, being denied that, to die young — 
prompted a heroic resolution to throw themselves forthwith 
into the river. They set out, and the river was not far. Then 
Moliere persuaded them that such a noble action should not 
be buried in the shades of night ; that it would more properly 
be done in the light of day. So they stopped, and, looking at 
each other, said : ' ' He is right " ; to which Chapelle added, 
" Yes, gentlemen, let us not drown ourselves until to-morrow 
morning, and, meanwhile, let us drink the rest of the wine. ,, 
But the following day saw a change in their ideas; they con- 
cluded that, after all, it was better to support the miseries of 
life. 

Among those great minds, Boileau constantly remained 
the bond between rivals. An intimate friend of Racine, he 
never quarreled with Moliere ; he ran to the king to ask him 
to transfer the royal pension, with which Louis had honored 
him, to the aged Corneille, who found himself deprived, with- 
out reason, of the monarch's favor. Boileau entered the 
Academy in 1684, immediately after La Fontaine ; his satires 
had retarded his election. " He praised without flattery, he 
humbled himself nobly,' ' says Louis Racine, " and when de- 
claring that membership in the Academy should be closed to 
him for many reasons, he alluded to all the Academicians 
whom he had 'satirized in his works." 

Boileau survived Racine by twelve years, without setting 
foot in the court subsequent to his first interview with the king 
after Racine 's death. ' ' I have been at Versailles, ' ' he writes, 

1 These cabarets were later called cates. 
214 






THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

" where I have seen Madame de Maintenon, and after- 
ward the king, who overwhelmed me with kind expressions ; so, 
here I am, more the historiographer than ever. His Majesty 
spoke to me of M. Racine in a way to make all the courtiers 
anxious to die, if they thought he would speak of them in this 
way after their death. However, this consoled me very little 
for the loss of our illustrious friend, who is none the less 
dead, although mourned by the greatest king in the universe." 
' ' Remember, ' ' Louis XIV had said, ' ' that I have always one 
hour a week to give you when you wish to come. ' ' However, 
Boileau did not return. " What should I do at the court? " 
he used to say. " I no longer know how to praise." He lived 
in retirement on his estate at Auteuil until his death. Boileau 
died in 1711, having survived all his friends, leaving almost 
all his estate to the poor, and followed to his tomb by a 
numerous crowd. " He had many friends," said the people. 
' ' yet they assure us that he spoke ill of everybody. ' ' 

No writer has contributed more to the formation of poetry 
than has Boileau; no juster and more delicate judgment has 
appreciated the merit of authors; no more elevated soul has 
directed a firmer and saner mind. In spite of the vicissitudes 
of letters, in spite of the sometimes excessive rigor of his 
decisions, Boileau has left on the French language an in- 
effaceable imprint. His talent has exercised less influence 
than his mind ; his judgment and his character have had more 
influence than his verses. 

There are few writers who have been so widely read as 
Boileau. 1 He exercised an influence throughout Europe, and 
acted upon the works of Pope, Dryden, Gottsched, Lessing, 
Luzan, and others. Boileau 's dictum was adopted as the 
highest standard of French taste. Lanson writes: <l Ex- 
perience seems to indicate that the principles of Boileau in 
their essential and profound signification embody the funda- 
mental and permanent demands of French taste. For two 
centuries all that has been found solid, sane, and durable in 
our literature, all that has been saved from oblivion and the 
decay of time, is the diction essentially conforming to the doc- 
trine of the Art poetique : and the concealed faults or obvious 

1 There are two hundred and twenty-five editions of his works of which 
sixty editions were published during his lifetime. 

215 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

deformities which caused the destruction of schools and their 
works, were generally what Boileau implicitly or expressly 
condemned. ... A psychological and moral literature, clear, 
precise, regular, and interesting, based on reality and yet 
resting the mind from reality, the joy of the esprits legers, 
and the food of active intellect — that is what French taste 
demands. Because of this, therefore, for many years to come 
we shall have something of Boileau, and something essential, 
in all the works which will succeed among us. ' ' 



MOLIERE 

Tragedy had held the stage early in the seventeenth cen- 
tury in France. Not until Moliere rang up the curtain on 
true comedy did the sock take the place of the buskin. 
Farces had been introduced by Gros Guillaume and Gautier- 
Garguille; Desmarets de Saint- Sorlin had written a comedy 
sketch of manners, Les Visionnaires (The Visionaries) ; and 
Corneille's Le Menteur, the first notable attempt at a comedy 
of character, had appeared. But the complications of plot in 
these plays were almost incomprehensible! and Scarron's Le 
Marquis ridicule, and Don Japhet d'Armenie abounded in 
mystification, and buffoonery. With Moliere 's advent these 
clumsy and superficial essays gave way to refreshing, natural 
pictures of life; and that, too, at a time when life was 
stifled by affectation and artificiality of speech and manner. 
Mediocre poets could not effect this change; only a genius 
could show the way and find the means to correct and improve 
society — in fact, to rescue it. Moliere, creator of modern 
comedy, unfettered by rules, rose to heights never before and 
never since attained. Comedy as it had been developed in 
the Greek and Roman world, and continued in the Italian 
Commedia dell ' 'arte, found in him a master who overturned 
the traditions of comic complications — depicting instead the 
weaknesses of his age and of humanity as we still see it to- 
day. Of all Frenchmen, Moliere remains the author who 
enjoys universal homage, whose place in the world's literature 
is above all other contrivers of comedy, ancient and modern. 

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who later took the pseudonym of 

216 






THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

" Moliere," was born at Paris in 1622. His father, chamber- 
lain of the king, sent him to be educated at the " College 
de Clermont " (later Louis-le- Grand), at that time conducted 
by the Jesuits. But he was preferably in attendance at the 
lessons which the philosopher Gassendi gave to his disciples, 
among whom were the celebrated traveler Bernier, the poet 
Henault, the humorist Cyrano de Bergerac, and Chapelle the 
Epicurean. During the course of these lessons, Poquelin ac- 
quired a certain liberty of thought which often appeared in 
his plays, and, later, lent color to the accusation that he was 
irreligious. After his studies were finished, Moliere, at the 
age of twenty, played in the gambling house of la Perle, and 
then organized a company under the ambitious name of 
L'lllustre Theatre in 1643, where he acted under the name 
of Moliere. The next year the company was stranded, Moliere 
was arrested by the tradesman who supplied the candles, and 
the company had to borrow money to release him from prison. 
In 1646 he left Paris as the chief of a small troop of actors, 
who, not being able to support themselves in Paris, traveled 
twelve years through the provinces. In 1653, at Lyons, he 
staged his comedy L'Etourdi, 1 the first regular play he had 
ever composed; Le Depit Amour eux 2 was presented at Be- 
ziers 3 in 1656, where he was the protege of Prince de Conti, 
governor of Languedoc. The company returned to Paris in 
1658, and Moliere played before the king in the hall of the 
Guards of the old Louvre. Under the patronage of the king 
and of Monsieur, the king 's brother, Moliere became the chief 
of a troop called the ' ' Troupe de Monsieur ' ' which played 
in the Hotel du Petit-Bourbon. Later they played in the 
Palais-Royal under the protection of the king and were called 
" troupe du roy " in opposition to the " troupe royale " of the 
Hotel de Bourgogne, and of the Theatre du Marais. Some 
years later, Moliere 's company absorbed the Marais company 
to form the Theatre Guenegaud. In 1680, by order of Louis 

1 L'Etourdi is imitated from the Vlnawertito of Nicolo Barbieri. 

3 Le Depit Amoureux is derived from Vlnteresse, by Nicolas Secchi, and 
from the farce, Gli Sdegni amorosi. 

3 For the opening of the session of the Estates of Languedoc. Local 
tradition still shows the chair in the barber's shop where Moliere sat in 
silence and studied from life the various characters who assembled there. 

217 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

XIV, who wished to have only one French theatre in Paris, 
Moliere 's company was united with the " Troupe royale de 
1 'Hotel de Bourgogne," forming the famous Comedie Fran- 
chise (official name of the Theatre-Francais) in a wing of the 
Palais-Royal. So Moliere may be considered the true founder 
of the Theatre-Francais. It was dedicated to a classic reper- 
tory and to this day is considered the foremost stage for classic 
plays and their perfect interpretation. It was at the Theatre 
du Petit-Bourbon that Moliere in 1659 achieved such a signal 
victory with his Precieuses Ridicules. He broke away from 
the Italians and Spanish, and, taking the customs of his time 
at first hand, squarely attacked the affectations and absurd 
pretensions of the vulgar imitators of the Hotel Rambouillet. 
" Courage, Moliere ! " cried an old man from the midst of the 
pit. " That is true comedy! " When he published his play 
Moliere, lest he offend a powerful class, took pains to say in 
the preface, that he was not attacking the real Precieuses, but 
those who imitated them poorly. Menage, one of the most 
illustrious alcovistes, 1 declared himself converted. " Mon- 
sieur," said he to Chapelain, while coming from the opening 
performance of the Precieuses, " we used to approve of all 
the nonsense which has just been so cleverly criticised with so 
much good sense, and, as Saint Remi said to Clovis : i We shall 
have to burn what we have worshiped, and worship what we 
have burned. ' " 2 "It happened, as I had predicted," added 
Menage. After that first performance they abandoned the 
nonsensical and forced style which had been cultivated, and 
applauded Moliere with enthusiasm. 

Then Moliere took another step. " Henceforth," said 
he, " I shall study Plautus and Terence, and reveal the frag- 
ments of Meander." Like his illustrious contemporaries, he 
proceeded to borrow from the classics ; he assimilated what he 
borrowed, and impressed it with his own originality. From 
Plautus he took L 'Avare and Amphitryon; from Terence, the 
knaveries of -his valets and the debates of his Adelphi con- 
cerning marriage. In Italy he sought his scholar — academi- 

1 An alcoviste was an habitue of ruelles and also meant a cicisbeo or 
professed gallant and attendant of a married woman. 

2 The entire quotation reads. "Courbe la tete, fier Sicambre, adore ce 
que tu as brule, brule ce que tu as adoreV* 

218 






THE CLASSIC FRL^CH SCHOOL 

cian of Bologna or Padua — whose education he completed 
in the school of the French Vadius or Pancraces; Pantalon, 
an amorous and credulous old man, was transformed into 
Gerontes, and Scapin, wily and knavish, naturally followed 
his master, Moreto inspired La Princesse d' Elide; Tirso de 
Molin's Le Convive de Pierre (The Stone Guest), became Le 
Festin de Pierre, usually known as Don Juan. It was as 
Moliere himself said : " Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve." * 
But it did not in the least detract from his glory ; like Shake- 
speare, he did not copy, he transformed, by virtue of his 
genius. 

L'Ecole des Maris (The School for Husbands) and Les 
Fdcheux (The Bores) were performed for the fetes at Vaux. 
Among the ridiculous characters of this last-named play, 
Moliere had not included that of the hunter. Louis XIV him- 
self pointed out to him his omission. i ' There is one whom you 
have forgotten, the Marquis de Soyecour," said he. Twenty- 
four hours later the tiresome gamekeeper, with all his hunting 
jargon, forever found a place among the Fdcheux 2 of Moliere. 
With L'Ecole des femnies, 3 La Critique de VEcole des 
Femmes, and I'Impromptu de Versailles, began the fighting 
period of the great comic poet's life. Accused of irreligion, 
attacked even in his private life, Moliere, repaying insult 
with insult, exposed the idiosyncrasies of his enemies to the 
ridicule of the court and of posterity. Don Juan ou Le Festin 
de Pierre, was designed to clear the author of the reproach of 
impiety; La Princesse d' Elide and L' Amour medecin were 

1 "I take my own wherever I find it." 

Pascal said: "Let no one say that I have said nothing new. The 
arrangement of the material is new." 

La Bruyere said: "Everything has been said" and yet he wrote an 
excellent and an original book. 

2 Les Fdcheux is the first example of those pieces called " pieces a tiroir " 
— plays without plan or plot; and in it was introduced, for the first time, 
the comedy-ballet, in which the dance is so intermingled with the action 
as to fill up intervals, without breaking the continuity of the play. Les 
Fdcheux was conceived, written, rehearsed and performed within fifteen 
days. 

3 Sir Walter Scott says: " The Country Wife of Wycherly is an imitation 
of L'Ecole des femmes, with the demerit on the part of the English author 
of having rendered licentious a plot which in Moliere's hands is only gay." 

219 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

only charming interludes in the great struggle henceforth 
waged between realities and appearances. 

In 1666, Moliere produced Le Misanthrope, an invective 
against the superficiality and the perfidies of the court. Le 
Tartuffe was a new effort in the same direction, bolder in its 
attack on religious hypocrisy, and seeming to strike even at 
religion itself. Moliere had been working on it for a long 
time. The first acts had been played at court under the title 
L' Hypocrite; the completed play was performed under the 
title of L'Imposteur, during the absence of the King. The 
next day its representation was forbidden : ' ' His Honor, the 
first President Lamoignon did not wish it to be played. ' ' 1 

The good sense and judgment of the king finally prevailed 
over the terrors of the true devotees and the anger of the 
hypocrites. His Majesty had just seen the performance of 
an impious buffoonery, when he said to the Prince of Conde, 
who was protecting Moliere: " I should like to know why 
people who are so scandalized at Moliere 's comedy say nothing 
of that of Scaramouche. ' ' 2 ' * The reason for that, ' ' re- 
sponded the prince, " is that the comedy of Scaramouche 
deals with heaven and religion, for which these gentlemen 
care nothing, whereas Moliere 's comedy reflects themselves — 
a thing which they cannot endure." The following frag- 
ments of a petition presented to the king by Moliere, on the 
comedy of Tartuffe, illustrates some of the difficulties he had 
to contend with : 

Sire : 

The duty of comedy being to correct men while diverting them, I 
have thought that in the profession I pursue I could do nothing 
better than attack by means of ridiculous descriptions the vices of my 
epoch; and since hypocrisy, without doubt, is one of the most 
prevalent of these, one of the most troublesome and dangerous, I 
had thought, Sire, that I should render no small service to all honest 

1 The play upon words is lost by translation. Moliere said: "Monsieur 
le premier president ne veut pas qu'on le joue," le referring to Tartuffe, but 
which may also be applied to Lamoignon. 

3 Scaramouche, a personage of the ancient Italian stage always dressed 
in black from head to foot. Tiberio Fiorelli was the first comedian known 
by that name, and is said to have invented it. Moliere uses it in his phrase 
"Le ciel s'est habille, ce soir, en Scaramouche." 

220 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

people in your kingdom if I made a comedy describing hypocrites and 
exposing to view, as they ought to be, all the studied deceits of these 
extremely "good" people, all the hidden tricks of these counter- 
feiters in devotion, who wish to ensnare men by means of false zeal 
and a sophistical charity. . . . But, in spite of this glorious declara- 
tion of the greatest king on earth as well as the most enlightened; in 
spite, moreover, of the approbation of the Papal legate and the greater 
part of our prelates — all of whom, in the readings of my work which 
I have given them, found themselves in accord with the sentiments of 
your Majesty; in spite of all this, I say, we see a book composed by 
the cure *• of which boldly gives the lie to all this august testi- 
mony. Your Majesty need say nothing, and the legate and the prel- 
ates need not render their judgment ; my comedy, without his having 
seen it, is diabolical, and diabolical is my brain; I am a demon clothed 
in flesh in the form of a man — a libertine, an impious wretch worthy 
of exemplary punishment. It does not suffice that a public fire ex- 
piate my offense; I should settle too cheaply. The charitable zeal of 
this good man does not stop at this: he does not wish that I should 
have mercy from God, he wishes that I be damned ; it is all settled. . . . 

While waiting permission to stage Tartu ffe, Moliere had 
produced Le Medeein Malgre Lui, Amphitryon, George Dan- 
din and L'Avare, 2 lavishing freely the inexhaustible resources 
of his genius, and always ready for the royal or princely 
fetes. Moliere was the comedian, the director and manager 
of his company, and also furnished the plays, most of which 
were improvised on command for the court. Monsieur de 
Pourceaugnac was played for the first time at Chambord; 
" one year later," Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme appeared, with 
the divertissements and music of Lulli. The play directly 
satirized one of the most frequently ridiculous characteristics 
of his time. Many of the people secretly felt themselves 
pricked ; their anger broke out at the first representation, and 
Moliere thought himself ruined; but the king said to him: 

1 The cure* of Saint-Barthelemy, Pierre R011II6, who made a most violent 
attack on Moliere and called him "that demon clad in human flesh, who 
deserved to be sent through earthly, to eternal, fires," in a pamphlet (Le 
Roy glorieux au monde). In answer, the king adopted Moliere's company 
as his servants and gave them the title of Troupe du roy. 

2 After Plautus, and the play Goethe considered among the finest ever 
written. 

221 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

" You have never done anything which has diverted me so 
much; your comedy is excellent." So the court immediately 
hastened to admire it. 

The king had lavished his favors on Moliere, who was sta- 
tioned near him as chamberlain by heredity. 1 He had given 
him a pension of seven thousand livres and the privileges of 
the royal theater. He protected him against the slanders of 
certain of his private servitors and gave him a public proof 
of his esteem, by being the godfather of the oldest of his 
children, whose godmother was the Duchess of Orleans. Hear- 
ing that some of the officers of his court had treated Moliere 
in a contemptuous manner, the king bade him be a guest at 
his private table, where he himself served the actor-dramatist, 
saying to his astonished courtiers : ' l You see me occupied 
in serving Moliere, who is not good enough company for 
some of my officers. ' ' But all the power of the monarch, and 
his constant favors, could not efface the public prejudice which 
was then attached to the actor's profession, and confer upon 
the comedian, seen every day on the stage, the station and rank 
to which his genius entitled him. The friends of Moliere urged 
him to quit the theater. ' ' Your health is declining, ' ' Boileau 
said to him, ' l because the profession of a comedian is exhaust- 
ing you. Why do you not give it up ? ' ' " Alas ! ' ' answered 
Moliere, sighing, " it is a point of honor which holds me." 
" And what do you mean by that? " asked Boileau. " The 
point of honor," explained Moliere, " consists in my not de- 
serting more than a hundred persons whose support depends 
upon my personal exertions." 

In ordinary life Moliere laughed little, and observed a 
great deal ; his friends had nicknamed him * ' the Contem- 
plator." Constantly wounded in his affections and his pride, 
Moliere was unhappy and sad. Ill-mated with a wife of 
whom he was justly jealous, whom he passionately loved, and 
unable to find at home consolation for the vexations and 
troubles of InVlife, he sought in work and incessant activity, 

1 According to the custom in France in 1669, the valets de chambre- 
tapissiers made the king's bed every day, together with the regular valets. 
They were obliged to take care of the campaign furnishings, and to arrange 
his Majesty's furniture. 

222 



'THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

the only relief which a proud spirit could enjoy. Psyche, 
Les Fourberies de Scapin (The Impostures of Scapin), and 
La Comtesse d 'Escarl agnas produced in 1671/ disclosed nei- 
ther the sadness nor the increasing suffering of their author. 
Les Femmes Savantes at first had little success; it was pro- 
nounced cold. The marvelous fineness of portraiture, the 
accuracy of judgment, the delicacy and elegance of the dia- 
logue, were not relished until later. "When Moliere wrote 
Le Malade Imaginaire — the last of the repeated blows which 
he had aimed at physicians — he was in worse health than 
usual ; his friends, his actors, urged him not to play. * ' What 
do you want me to do? " he asked. " There are fifty poor 
workmen who have only their day's wages on which to live; 
what will they do if we do not play 1 I should reproach myself 
for having neglected to give them bread, if only for a single 
day." 

Moliere was, his contemporaries say, a comedian from head 
to foot. " It seemed as if he had several voices; everything 
spoke with him, and by a step, by a smile, by a wink of the 
eye and a movement of the hand, he could make more things 
understood than the greatest talker could express in an hour. ' * 
During the fourth performance of Le Malade Imaginaire, on 
the seventeenth of February, 1693, Moliere 's health, under- 
mined by unhappiness and overwork gave way. He had a 
hemorrhage which a few hours later ended his life, at fifty-one 
years of age. According to the ridiculous customs of the time 
he, as an actor, was denied Christian burial. 

In the preface to the edition of Moliere of 1682 — attrib- 
uted by some to Marcel, by others to La Grange and Vinot— 
is found the following : l ' Everyone regretted a man so rare, 
and still regrets him every day, but particularly the persons 
who have good taste and delicacy. He was named the Ter- 
ence 2 of his century ; this one word includes all the praises 
which might be bestowed on him." La Fontaine expressed 
his sorrow and regret at the death of Moliere, in this touching 
epitaph : 

1 The same year the first French opera Pomone was produced. The 
Academy of Music had been founded in 1669. 

2 A celebrated Roman comic poet who lived in the second century before 
Christ. 

223 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

Sous ce tombeau gisent Plaute ] et Terence. 
Et cependant le seul Moliere y git: 
Leurs trois talents ne formaient qu'un esprit, 
Dont le bel art rejouissait la France, 
lis sont partis, et j'ai peu d'esperance 
De les revoir malgre tous nos efforts; 
Pour un long temps selon toute apparence, 
Terence, Plaute et Moliere sont morts. 2 

The great glory of Moliere is to have been the poet of 
humanity, and at the same time the poet of his own epoch. 
Not only was he the first to perceive and chastise the ridicu- 
lous elements in things which his contemporaries esteemed 
and took seriously, but he has incarnated men's vices and 
whims in creations which have an imperishable verity. His 
characters have a physiognomy so distinct, so personal, that 
they may be recognized among a thousand ; we think that their 
epoch lived with them, yet each century finds in them its own 
leanings and vices; they are at once real as individuals and 
eternally true as types. They are not creatures of fantasy, 
but of real life, with warm blood pulsing through their veins, 
and his characters, with their human frailties and their eter- 
nal veracity have raised Moliere to one of the greatest poets of 
all time. The plot which sweeps his actors along, and envel- 
ops them like an atmosphere, is resplendent with the fire of 
his imagination. It is a warmth of gayety which warms us, 
which impassions all this comic world, and scintillates from all 
the objects in it, " like the light of a southern sky, in a thou- 
sand brilliant effects." This burst of joyous humor, this 
sweep of imagination, increases in Moliere along with the 
severe gift of philosophic observation. In proportion as his 
reason becomes more profound and his insight more pene- 
trating, his comic power increases and burns. It is, so to 
speak, the lyricism of irony and sarcastic gayety, linked with 
pure sportiveness and sparkling laughter. In a clear, pre- 

1 A Roman dramatist (second century B.C.). 

2 Under this tomb rest Plautus and Terence — yet only Moliere rests 
here: their three talents formed but one mind, whose fine art delighted 
France. They are gone, and I have little hope of seeing them again, in 
spite of all our efforts; for a long time, according to all appearances, 
Terence, Plautus, and Moliere are dead. 

224 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

eise and natural manner he speaks the language of the cities, 
of the provinces, of all classes and of all passions. Le Malade 
Imaginaire is its last expression and most striking example. 
In this play Moliere approaches the ideal of free and unre- 
strained imagination, which made the charm and poetry of the 
ancient Greek comedy. 

Saintsbury says : * * Of all dramatists, ancient and modern, 
Moliere is perhaps that one who has borne most constantly in 
mind the theory that the stage is a lay pulpit, and that its 
end is not merely amusement, but the reformation of manners 
by means of amusing spectacles. . . . Brunetiere says : ' ' One 
may almost say that, during two centuries, a comedy was criti- 
cised with Moliere as a basis ; in other words, that during this 
time he was the standard for Europe." 

To the accusation made against him by some pedantic 
critics, who objected to his plays because they were not made 
strictly to conform to rules, Moliere answered with a convinc- 
ing argument : ' ; Je voudrais bien savoir si la grande regie de 
toutes les regies n 'est pas de plaire. ' ' x And all the world who 
loves true comedy says of him with La Fontaine : ' ' Voila 
mon Homme ! ' ' 

Moliere was not a member of the Academy ; his vocation 
had closed its doors to him. It was almost a hundred years 
after his death, in 1778, that a bust of him was erected be- 
neath which were carved these words: " Rien ne manque a 
sa gloire, il manquait a la notre. ' ' 2 

The three masterpieces of Moliere are Le Misanthrope, Le 
Tartuffe, 3 and Les Femmes Savant es. 

LE MISANTHROPE 

Alceste is one of the most loyal of men. He lacks only 
one virtue — indulgence to the frailties of mankind. His 
peevish wisdom pardons no form of human weakness. He is 
ready to denounce as a lie, as treason, the most harmless ex- 
pression that implies a concession to the customs of the world. 

1 " I should really like to know if the great rule of all rules is not that 
of pleasing." 

2 ''His glory lacks nothing; he was lacking to ours." 

3 Moliere himself wrote it Tartuffe; the French Academy changed the 
spelling to Tartufe. 

16 225 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

To the bad humor of Alceste, Moliere opposes the optimistic 
character of Philinte. Alceste falls in love with a coquette; 
faithful Eliante would much better deserve his love, but 
he loves Celimene in spite of himself. The indignation of 
Alceste is often justified by the vices of that society in the 
midst of which he lives: the hypocrisy and sweetish sp useful- 
ness of the prude, Arsinoe ; the fatuity of marquises ; the van- 
ity of the court poet, and especially the perfidious coquetry 
of Celimene, are offenses that wound profoundly a man of 
intelligence and noble character. Nor is Alceste ridiculous 
except at certain moments, when the violence of his passions 
contrasts too strongly with the causes which provoke them. 
Whether Philinte has praised bad verses, or whether corrupt 
judges have rendered an unfair decision, the misanthrope 
makes no distinction; he bursts out, he becomes indignant, he 
declares himself resolved to flee from society, to withdraw 
from this wicked life — forgetting that there would be little 
merit in loving men if they were perfect, and that the rarest 
and most difficult virtue, charity, consists precisely in loving 
them in spite of their faults. 

Moliere was loudly censured as having ridiculed in the 
person of Alceste, the Duke de Montausier, a man of honor 
and virtue, but of blunt, discourteous manners. The duke, 
informed that he had been put on the stage by Moliere, 
threatened vengeance; but being persuaded to see the play, 
he sought the author instantly, embraced him repeatedly, and 
assured him that if he (Moliere) had really thought of him 
when composing the Misanthrope, he regarded it as an honor 
which he could never forget. It is of Montausier that Boi- 
leau had said, in his satire to Valaincour : ' ' The smile on his 
face is in bad humor. ' ' 

Le Misanthrope pictures the suffering in the heart of a 
man who loves, and sees himself deceived without his own 
sentiments becoming extinguished (the suffering of Moliere 
himself). The Misanthrope is the most correct work of 
Moliere, and a^ great number of its verses have become pro- 
verbial. For example : 

L'ami du genre humain n'est point du tout mon fait. 1 

1 To be a friend of the human race does not at all suit me. 
226 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

Ces haines vigoureuses 

Que doit donner le vice aux ames vertueuses. ' 

Un endroit ecarte 

Ou d'etre homme d'honneur on ait la liberte, 3 



TARTUFFE 

A rich and pious bourgeois, Orgon, has been imprudent 
enough to receive in his home a man whose apparent devout- 
ness has deceived him. His mother, Madame Pernelle, is, 
like him, the dupe of this sacrilegious and deceitful humbug. 
In vain have his brother-in-law, his son, and specially his ser- 
vant, the frank and sprightly Dorine, discovered the rascal 
beneath the mask of holiness. Orgon first opens his eyes at 
the moment when he has persona' proofs of the knavery of 
his protege — at the moment wher. his entire estate, when his 
very house, belong to the scoundrel who expels him from it; 
when his honor, his liberty, and perhaps his life, are in im- 
minent danger. A verse often quoted reads : 

On n'y respecte rien, chacun y parle haut, 

Et c'est tout justement la cour du roi Petaud. 3 



LES FEMMES SAVANTES 

Les Femm.es savantes is, so to speak, the continuation of 
Les Precieuses ridicules. One of the finest and best poised 
pieces of Moliere, it succeeded completely at the court and in 
the world of letters, but did not receive from the public the 
welcome which it deserved. . What Moliere attacks here again 
is not so much science as pedantry. The unwholesome air of 
pedantry and the " higher life " has infected the home of a 
simple and good bourgeois, Chrysale. His wife Philaminte, 

1 The vigorous hatred that vice should arouse in virtuous souls. 

2 A sequestered spot where one is free to be a gentleman of honor. 

3 This phrase from Tartuffe has become proverbial as meaning " when 
everybody wishes to speak at once." At one time in France, beggars 
named a chief whom they facetiously called "King Petaud" (from the 
Latin, peto, "I demand"). He had no authority whatever over his sub- 
jects. 

227 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

his sister Belise, and Armande, his oldest daughter, converse 
all day with pedants of poor tone, whom they consider sub- 
lime geniuses. To look after the cares of the household is be- 
neath them. They are entirely given up to pretentious bab- 
bling, to literary and philosophic divagations ; they quote Des- 
cartes, Epicurus, Plato; they seek animals in the moon, and 
weigh the verses of M. Trissotin, an aspirant to the dowry of 
Henriette, the second daughter of Chrysale, who has been able 
to escape the contagion of maternal folly. She is one of the 
most sympathetic creations of Moliere. With the consent of 
her father, she has promised her hand to a good man, Cli- 
tandre, a declared enemy of false knowledge and pedantry. 
Henriette has not concealed from Trissotin the fact that she 
has only repugnance for his person, and that her heart is with 
Clitandre ; but he does not pride himself on delicacy, and will 
not renounce for such a light rebuff the fine dower which he 
covets. Ariste, brother of Chrysale, and the thinker of the 
comedy, intervenes very opportunely. At the moment when 
they are about to sign the marriage contract, he brings the 
news that Chrysale is ruined. Trissotin perceives, a little late, 
that it is not at all consistent with his dignity to accept a heart 
which does not yield itself ; and he retires. Ariste has brought 
only false news ; the disasters of which he spoke are of his own 
invention. It is a stratagem which he has employed, in order 
to undeceive Philaminte and oblige Trissotin to show the 
depths of his soul. Philaminte is constrained to yield, and 
Clitandre will marry Henriette. 



L'AVARE » 

Harpagon loves nothing in the world but himself and his 
ducats. Solely occupied in guarding and increasing his 
estate, he sees in his children only enemies and domestic spies. 
In return, his daughter Elise, and his son Cleante, have nei- 
ther feelings of tenderness nor respect for him. Left to them- 
selves, without guide and counsel, they are guilty of the most 
blameworthy actions. Elise authorizes the man whom she loves 

1 L'Avare, which in Germany is the most popular of Moliere's plays, is 
founded on Aulularia, a comedy by Plautus. 

228 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

to come to the paternal house in disguise, and Cleante ruins 
himself in advance by loans from usurers. Harpagon takes 
it into his head to marry them. About their inclinations and 
their tastes he cares little : for his son he has chosen a widow ; 
he destines his ' ' daughter for Monsieur Anselme, ' ' a prudent 
and wise man " not more than fifty years of age "; he himself 
wishes to marry a young girl of poor parents, whose beauty 
has charmed him. He discovers that his son is in love with 
this young girl, yet it makes little difference to him. But 
an accident affecting that which he holds most dear makes 
him for a moment forget his fine projects. His treasure, a 
cash box containing ten thousand crowns, has disappeared. 
He wishes to have the people of the city and suburbs arrested 
en masse. It turns out that his domestic, Valere, the dis- 
guised lover of Elise, has stolen the precious cash box, and he 
restores it to Harpagon only on condition that he will marry 
his daughter and son according to their own wishes. It is 
found that Valere is the son of Monsieur Anselme, and the 
brother of that Marianne who is sought in marriage by Har- 
pagon and his son. This discovery ends their difficulties : 
Valere is to marry ISlise, and Cleante will wed Marianne. 
Harpagon, to whom the cash box has been returned, consents, 
provided that he be put to no expense whatsoever, and a new 
coat be made for him for the wedding. 

■ { George Dandin " is concerned with a rich peasant, who 
has married a young lady of noble family, in spite of the coun- 
sel of his reason, and finds cause to repent, having strayed 
into this role of a ridiculous rustic gentleman. " Tu Pas 
voulu, George Dandin, ' ' * has become a well recognized 
quotation. 

Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is the eternal image of the 
parvenu — of the ridiculous figure cut by a good man when 
trying to imitate the manners of a caste which is not his own. 

L' Amour Medecin — the play which, as Moliere tells us in 
his Preface, was " proposed, written, learned, and presented 
in five days "—is the true point of departure of the attacks 
against the Faculty (of Medicine). He had already aimed 
several attacks against physicians in Don Juan, but this time 

1 "You would have it so, George Dandin." 
229 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

he attacked them face to face, and began a campaign which he 
continued in several plays. 

Sir Walter Scott says: " The medical faculty at Paris 
in the middle of the seventeenth century was at a very low 
ebb. Almost every physician was attached to some particular 
form of treatment, which, exercised on his patients with- 
out distinction, probably killed in as many instances as it 
effected a cure. Their exterior — designed, doubtless, to in- 
spire respect by its peculiar garb and formal manner — was 
in itself matter for ridicule. They ambled on mules through 
the city of Paris attired in antique and grotesque dress, the 
jest of its laughter-loving people, and the dread of those who 
were unfortunate enough to be their patients. The consulta- 
tions of these sages were conducted in a barbarous Latinity; 
or, if they condescended to use the popular language, they dis- 
figured it with an unnecessary profusion of technical terms, 
or rendered it unintelligible by a prodigal tissue of scholastic 
formalities of expression. The venerable dullness and pe- 
dantic ignorance of the faculty was incensed at the ridicule 
cast upon it in L' Amour Medecin, especially as four of its 
most distinguished members were introduced under Greek 
names, invented by Boileau for his friend's use. The consulta- 
tion held by these sages, which respects everything save the 
case of a patient; the ceremonious difficulty with which they 
are at first brought to deliver their opinions ; the vivacity and 
fury with which each finally defends his own, predicting the 
instant death of the patient if another treatment be followed 
— all this seemed to the public highly comical, and led many 
reflecting men to think that Lisette was not far wrong in 
contending that a sick man should not be said to die of a fever 
or consumption, but of four doctors and two apothecaries. 
The farce enlarged the sphere of Moliere 's enemies; but as the 
poet suffered none of the faculty 1 to prescribe for him, their 
resentment was of the less consequence. ' ' 

1 Moliere asked a favor of the king for the son of a physician. " What, 
Moliere," exclaimed the monarch, "you, have a doctor! What does he 
do?" "Sire," said Moliere, "we argue, he prescribes remedies for me; I 
take none, and get well." 



230 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

LA FONTAINE 

Jean de La Fontaine, born in 1621 at Chateau-Thierry, 
died in 1695. After an indifferent education he entered the 
Oratory 1 at Reims, at the age of twenty, to study theology, 
but soon left it, not having an ecclesiastical vocation. He 
came and went from city to city, amusing himself everywhere, 
leading a nonchalant life. 

Pour moi le monde entier etait plein de delices, 

J'etais touche des fleurs, des doux sons, des beaux jours, 

Mes amis me cherchaient et parfois mes amours. 2 

Of a careless, flighty and impressionable disposition, he 
was altogether a creature of circumstance. Just as he had 
been influenced by the reading of a few books to study for the 
priesthood, so an ode of Malherbe 's made him a poet at twenty- 
five years of age. In order to check the insouciant life La 
Fontaine was leading, his father arranged a marriage for him 
with Marie Hericart, and gave him a position as maitre des 
eaux-et-forets in 1647. But he neglected alike his position 
and his wife, whom he left alone at Chateau-Thierry, spending 
most of his time in Paris, which gay capital he finally made 
his home. Here he was welcomed and loved by the great 
world, the princes of Conde and Conti, the Dukes of Bour- 
gogne and Vendome. Fouquet gave him a pension, and later, 
when this minister was disgraced and in danger of losing his 
life, La Fontaine pleaded for royal clemency in his poem 
Elegie aux Nymphes de Vaux: 

Du magnanime Henri qu'il contemple la vie; 
Des qu'il se put venger, il en perdit Ten vie, 
Inspirez a Louis cette m£me douceur. 3 

1 A Brotherhood founded by Philippe of Neri, in Italy, for the education 
of youths and the training of preachers, and brought into France in 1611 
by Cardinal de Berulle. 

2 For me the whole world was full of pleasure: I was moved by the 
flowers, by sweet sounds, by the beautiful days; I was sought by my 
friends, and sometimes by my loves. 

3 May the life of the magnanimous Henry — who, as soon as he could 
avenge, lost all desire to — inspire Louis with this same gentleness. 

231 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans, attached La 
Fontaine to herself as gentleman servant; the Duchess of 
Bouillon kept him at her home in the country; he lived for 
twenty years at the home of Madame de la Sabliere, beautiful 
and witty, who received many of the fashionables, and, see- 
ing herself ruined, reorganized her home, but kept, as she said 
to her friends, ' ' her dog, her cat, and La Fontaine. ' ' 

When she died, M. and Madame d'Hervart received the 
poet, already old and quite isolated, in their home and cared for 
him the remainder of his life. When d'Hervart was on his 
way to make the proposal to La Fontaine, he met him in the 
street. ' ' I was coming to ask you to stay with us, " he said. 
" I was going there/ ' answered La Fontaine with the most 
touching confidence. He remained until his death, content to 
go occasionally to Chateau-Thierry, as long as his wife lived, 
in order to sell, with her consent, some tract of land. His 
friends had tried to reconcile him to her, and, with this ob- 
ject, had sent him to Chateau-Thierry; he returned without 
having seen her. " I did not find my wife," said he; " she 
was at evening prayers." His absence of mind was some- 
times incredible, and his artlessness was often a source of 
great merriment at the famous reunions of Auteuil. He was 
nicknamed " le bonhomme" which led Moliere to remark: 
" Let us not make fun of ' le bonhomme,' he will perhaps out- 
live us." Louis XIV permitted La Fontaine to present to 
him in person, his published Fables. La Fontaine went 
to Versailles for the purpose, and made a very good presenta- 
tion speech, but forgot to bring the Fables. Neverthe- 
less, the king received him graciously, and gave him a purse 
filled with gold. La Fontaine promptly mislaid the purse, 
which was found later among the cushions of the carriage. 
He was expected one day at a friend's house to dinner: " I 
come from the burial of an ant," he said, on arriving late. 
" I followed the convoy to the cemetery, and returned with 
the family to their own home." 

In spite of his absence of mind, his original simplicity 
of nature and his incapacity in ordinary life, La Fontaine 
was able to judge the literary merit as well as the moral quali- 
ties of his famous friends. When they were together, they 
spoke of their diversions, of science and literature and of their 

232 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

own productions. They gave each other advice when one of 
them " succumbed to the malady of the period and wrote a 
book." La Fontaine gave a charming picture of their 
famous reunions in his novel Les Amours de Psyche et de 
Cupidon. The episode in the Golden Ass of Appuleius be- 
came, under La Fontaine's pen, a novel of adventure written 
in an ironical and facetious but graceful style, interspersed 
with verses. He describes the delightful intimacy enjoyed 
by these four illustrious friends, whom he names Acanthe 
(Racine), Ariste (Boileau), Gelaste (Moliere), and Polyphile 
(La Fontaine). 

La Fontaine wrote with a great promiscuity all genres 
of poetry: comedies, verses, ballads, epistles, and epigrams, 
but his masterworks are his Fables in twelve books (1668- 
1695), and his Contes et Nouvelles in five books (1665- 
1685). He was the fabuliste inimitable.' 1 Up to his time, 
the writers of fables had been only philosophers and satirists. 
La Fontaine rejuvenated the fable. The ancient fable con- 
cerned itself only with the meaning of the story and the moral 
thereof. La Fontaine's superiority lies in the narration it- 
self; the moral is not unduly obtruded — story and lesson 
are equally considered. The dominant trait of his genius is 
his universal sympathy and love ; he portrayed all ranks, from 
king to peasant, with warmth of feeling and a happy humor. 
He discovered the secret and profound charm of nature, 
animating it with his inexhaustible and gracious genius. He 
was flexible and naive at times, elegant, noble and penetrating, 
beneath a simplicity of form. He himself describes himself : 

Je m'avoue, il est vrai, s'il faut parler ainsi, 
Papillon du Paraasse et semblable aux abeilles, 
A qui le bon Platon compare nos merveilles : 
Je suis chose legere et vole a tout sujet, 
Je vais de fleur en fleur et d'objet en objet. 
A beaucoup de plaisirs je mele un peu de gloire. 2 

ir rhe word fabuliste is La Fontaine's invention, and as late as 1709 was 
still in use as designating only La Fontaine. 

2 1 confess myself, it is true, if one must so talk, a butterfly of Parnassus, 
and like the bees to which the good Plato compares our marvels. I am 
but a light thing, and fly to every subject; I go from flower to flower, and 
from object to object. With a great many pleasures I mix a little glory. 

233 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

An eminent and ingenious writer, M. Taine, has found in 
the fables of La Fontaine all the classes, all the professions, 
all the society of the seventeenth century : in the lion, the ab- 
solute king ; in the fox, the courtier ; in the wolf, the warrior ; 
in the bear, the country gentleman; in the ox, the peasant, 
and so on. However this may be, it is true that La Fontaine 
immediately finds the precise word which characterizes the 
role of his personages, just as he finds the swift stroke of 
delineation which makes us see their exterior ; the heron, with 
his long beak fastened like a handle to an equally long neck; 
the weasel, with the pointed nose; Triste-Oiseau Le Hibou 
(The Moping Owl), Le Bat Ronge-Maille (Nibble-Stitch), — 
and the rest. In his Fables he is the poet of all time, of all 
nations, of all ages of men. The child finds amusement in his 
works, the adult instruction, and the scholar admires them. 
They are of equal merit with the most beautiful works of the 
" grand siecle," as much by the irreproachable purity of 
their morality as by the inimitable perfection of their style. 
The poet took from its source the old apologue of the Orient, 
magnified through the centuries by the successive inventions 
of the Greeks, the Romans, and the moderns ; he made himself 
the universal heir of popular common sense ; he gathered care- 
fully all these fables, transcribed them, put them in verse, as 
he says modestly in his preface; and they are no longer the 
fables of Vishnu-Sarma, of iEsop, of Phaedra, of Babrius, of 
Planude; they are the fables of La Fontaine. Indeed, poetic 
originality does not consist in inventing the subject, but in 
discovering the poetry in the subject. The invention of La 
Fontaine is his manner of narration, his admirable style, that 
happy imagination which everywhere diffuses interest and 
life. " He does not compose/ ' says La Harpe, " he con- 
verses. If he tells a story, he is persuaded he has seen! " 
His erudition, his eloquence, his philosophy — all that is best 
in him of imagination, memory, sensibility — is made use of to 
interest you. Hence the phenomenon which had not been 
seen since the Odyssey — that singular but incontestable alli- 
ance of the highest poetry with the most naive description, 
hence, also, it comes, according to Moliere 's expression, that the 
great minds of France will not efface the bonhomme (La Fon- 
taine) . 

234 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

La Fontaine's Fables were published in three collections 
— the first dedicated to the Dauphin (son of Louis XIV), 
the rest to Madame de Montespan. They are, as he says, ' ' line 
ample comedie en cent actes divers et dont la scene est 
1 'univers. ' ' x Sometimes they reach the heights of the epic 
or lyric, but " come down again with a smile." At times 
elegiac and satiric, one also finds in them eloquent discourses 
and philosophical developments. The Duchesse de Bouillon 
called him her fablier, 2 saying that he produced fables as a 
tree produces fruit. Madame de Sevigne describes his 
Fables thus: " C'est un panier de cerises; on veut en choisir 
les plus belles, et le panier reste vide. ' ' 3 His famous fable, 
La Cigale et la Fourmi, is a masterpiece of the modest sim- 
plicity of his style. Other fables held in especial esteem are 
the touching Odyssey of Les deux Pigeons; Le Chene et le 
Roseau; Les Animaux malades de la Peste; Le Savetier et le 
Financier; La Laitiere et le Pot-au-lait; L f Alouette et ses 
petits, avec le Maitre d'un Champ; L' Homme et la Couleuvre 
— eloquent plea of animals against man; Le Paysan du 
Danube — a protest against war and its consequences; Le 
Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin; Le Loup et le Chienj Le 
Pot de terre et le Pot de fer; Le Meunier, son Fils, et I'Ane; 
L'Huitre et les Plaideurs; Philemon et Baucis. 4 ' 

Of these fables Taine writes: " They are our epics, we 
have no other. I need not take away this name from the in- 
sipid Henriade, nor from the artificial and sentimental med- 
ley which Chateaubriand entitled Les Martyrs. And this epic 
of La Fontaine is Gallic; always varied, always new. It is 

1 " An ample comedy in one hundred diverse acts of which the scene is 
the universe." 

2 ier, the usual French termination of fruit-trees: " pommier, poirier,' ; 
etc. 

* " It is a basket of cherries; in choosing the finest the basket is emptied. " 
* English titles: The Locust and the Ant; The Two Pigeons; The Oak 
and the Reed; The Animals Sick with the Plague; The Cobbler and the 
Banker; The Milkmaid and the Milk-can; The Lark, its Young, and the 
Owner of a Field; The Man and the Adder; The Peasant of the Danube; The 
Cat, the Weasel, and the Little Rabbit; The Dog and the Wolf; The Earthen 
Pot and the Iron Pot; The Miller, His Son, and the Ass; The Oyster and the 
Litigants; Philemon and Baucis. Ivan Kriloff, the Russian La Fontaine, 
borrowed thirty-seven of his fables from the French author. 

235 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

in touching these instincts, that La Fontaine became so pop- 
ular. With Rabelais, Voltaire, and Moliere, he is our most 
faithful mirror. Plato, it is said, having learned that the 
great king wished to know the Athenians, gave the advice to 
send him the comedies of Aristophanes; if the great king 
would wish to know us it is the books of La Fontaine which 
we should send to him." 

La Fontaine's Contes were written for the Duchesse de 
Bouillon (1664). They were patterned after the Decameron 
of Boccaccio, and on this account La Fontaine has been ac- 
cused of immorality. Yet we must remember that these Contes 
were written in the seventeenth century, and dedicated to a 
worthy woman of high standing. Let us bear in mind, too, 
what we read in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy : " One of 
the greatest amusements of our ancestors was reading Boc- 
caccio aloud — an entertainment of which the effects were 
speedily visible in the literature of our country. ' ' La Fontaine 
himself does not lay much stress on the Contes as stories, 
taking it for granted that everyone knew the subject matter; 
but with respect to their artistic form, he has said: 

Contorts, mais contons bien, c'est le point principal; 

C'est tout; a cela pres, je vous conseille 

De dormir comme moi sur Tune et l'autre oreille. 1 

However, the Contes, as a whole, with their refined licentious- 
ness, are inferior as a picture of manners to the coarser Fabli- 
aux which inspired them. 

In the Contes, La Fontaine — as Balzac did later in his 
Contes drolatiques — uses with adroitness many ancient 
phrases. He was the only one of the great writers of the 
seventeenth century who had any knowledge of the old 
French literature. Particularly beautiful is the story of Le 
Faucon, wherein a poor knight, having no other gift for his 
lady love, prepares a dainty morsel for her with his pet falcon. 

H. Taine, in' his La Fontaine et ses Fables writes: " The 
preachers, the philosophers, the poets formed a chorus to 

1 Let's tell stories, but let's tell them well, that's the main point. 
It is the whole thing; as for the rest, I advise you 
To sleep as I do, soundly. 

236 



THE CLASSIC FRENCH SCHOOL 

praise the imposing beauty of well-ordered morals and liter- 
ature, in a solemn anthem accompanied by the ecclesiastical 
organ. Bossuet leads them and the audience contemplates 
with awe the august display of violet robes, plumed hats 
and of spangled gowns, which arrange themselves in beautiful 
order before the king. In a corner is a good man who yawns 
or laughs. The sermon bores him, he dislikes ceremonies, con- 
siders the rows too regular, the organ too loud. He places 
on his prie-dieu the book of Saint- Augustine put into his hands 
by a friend. Furtively he draws from his pocket an edition 
of Rabelais, makes signs to his neighbors Chaulieu and the 
Great Prior, 1 and whispers low to them some drollery. ' ' His 
nurse during his last illness voiced the sentiments of all who 
knew this charming and rare creature and his original sim- 
plicity of nature: " God would never have the courage to 
condemn him." 

1 The Chevalier de Vendome, grand prieur de France. 



CHAPTER XVI 

LA CHAIRE 1 

In order to make religion understood and observed by 
the people, sermons were preached in the popular language 
at an early date. The sermons of the famous orator, Saint- 
Bernard, Abbot of the Cistercian Monastery of Clairvaux, 
(1091-1153, canonized 1174), were delivered partly for the 
people and partly for the instruction of the monks. Of these 
sermons only three hundred and forty in Latin, addressed to 
the monks, have been preserved. It was by such orators as 
Saint-Bernard, Pierre l'Ermite, Foulques de Neuilly and 
Maurice de Sully that the crusades were inspired. At the 
same time the foundation and development of the Dominican 
and Franciscan orders of the twelfth century gave a great 
impetus to religious eloquence. In the fourteenth century 
there was a decline in oratory. Nevertheless, we owe to this 
period the ablest orators, whose works have come down to us 
— Pierre d'Ailly, de Clemangis and Jean Charlier, better 
known as Gerson, Chancellor of the University and preacher 
of the court. In his sixty sermons one finds the defects of 
his time — the use of secular erudition, the abuse of allegory, 
and bad taste. Yet his eloquence touches us, for it makes one 
feel the sufferings and calamities which the orator deplores. 

In the fifteenth century, two Franciscan monks, Menot and 
Olivier Maillard, owe their fame to the boldness of an elo- 
quence that feared not to speak to the people in their own 
language, replete with rude and trivial imagery. 

In the sixteenth century, theological discussions rendered 
an eminent service to the progress of letters by enriching the 
common language with an abundance of ideas formerly con- 

1 The pulpit. 

238 



LA CHAIRE 

fined to Latin. Calvin especially was an important factor, 
with his Institution Chretienne. 

The seventeenth century, profoundly penetrated by reli- 
gious influence, produced a group of brilliant pulpit orators. 
The formulation of new precepts and the reform of the clergy 
gave renewed impulse to the eloquence of the pulpit, which 
became a school of psychology. Le Pere Bourgoing, le Pere 
Lejeune, le Pere Senault, le Pere Claude de Lingendes, Fran- 
cois de Sales, Saint Vincent de Paul, Du Perron and Mas- 
caron had illuminated Christian doctrine at the beginning of 
the century, and were the best preachers before Bossuet. It 
was in the epoch of Louis XIV that the eloquence of the 
pulpit reached its highest expression: the development of 
political and judicial eloquence was hardly possible during 
that reign of absolutism, but the preachers were spurred on 
to their utmost capacity by the aesthetic tastes of the court. 
Among these were: Bossuet, Bourdaloue, Fenelon, Flechier, 
and Massillon. 

The preachers of the early part of the century were ora- 
tors rather than moralists. Bossuet and Bourdaloue were 
both moralists and orators. They began to preach, Bossuet 
about 1655, and Bourdaloue some five years later. Although 
Bossuet was more attached to the teaching of doctrine, both 
turned their minds to the examination of things interior. 



BOSSUET 

Jacques-Benigne Bossuet, born at Dijon in 1627, belonged 
to a family of magistrates. He early entered the ecclesiasti- 
cal state, and from his childhood took delight in the Bible — 
especially the Old Testament — to such an extent that later 
what he wrote was sometimes composed almost wholly of Bibli- 
cal citations and allusions. At sixteen years of age the little 
abbot, as Tallemant called him, essayed his first sermon at the 
Hotel de Rambouillet; at eleven o'clock in the evening, 
mounted on a tabouret, he improvised a sermon on death be- 
fore the most imposing assembly of all the great minds of the 
time, which caused Voiture to remark: " Je n'ai jamais 
entendu precher ni si tot ni si tard." ("I have never 
heard preaching so early or so late.") Yet, in spite of his 

239 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

success, he pursued his studies in retirement. He emerged 
from it to publish his Exposition de la Fox Catholique, one 
of a series of pamphlets which make up the book Histoire 
des variations des eglises protestantes — a very clear, precise 
work in which he reduced to the essential points the contro- 
versy between Catholics and Protestants. He was from that 
time on considered one of the pillars of the church, and he 
was all his life struggling against the exaggerations of the 
Jansenists, who leaned too much to severity; of the Jesuits, 
who inclined too much toward indulgence ; of the Protestants, 
who accorded too much to reason; and of the Quietists, who 
deferred too much to sentiment. His Exposition is a history 
of reform from the Catholic point of view, yet sufficiently 
impartial. His reasoning may be summed up thus: " The 
Protestant confession of faith has changed often; hence it is 
false." The reply was that these modifications argued in 
favor of the Protestants, inasmuch as religion is progressive, 
and God reveals as men have need of revelation. Bossuet met 
the Protestants equally in the field of politics. 

It was at this time that Louis XIV, desirous that his work 
should be continued after him, resolved to have the heir to 
the throne reared under his eyes. To this end he intrusted 
the prince's education to Bossuet, who was then Bishop of 
Condom; and the prelate composed for his pupil the books 
which he needed and which he could not otherwise procure. 
Such is the origin of the Discours sur VHistoire Universelle, 
of the Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu et de Soi-meme, and 
of the Politique Tiree de VE oritur e Sainte." The Discours 
is a philosophy of history, from the Christian point of view, 
from the beginning of the world to Charlemagne. The work 
is divided into three parts. The first is concerned with a 
rapid exposition of events; the second presents the sequence 
of religion, and shows that events have disposed themselves 
marvelously — be it among the Jews, or in the Roman Empire 
— for the propagation of Christianity. The third part, and 
the most interesting, considers, from a purely human point 
of view, the causes of the grandeur and decadence of empires. 
Thus Bossuet reviews the history of the Egyptians, the Greeks, 
and the Romans, with whom he is more especially concerned. 
These studies show a great knowledge of history, and the 

240 



LA CHAIRE 

work as a whole forms a magnificent picture in which the 
thought may be criticised but not the execution. Montes- 
quieu's Grandeur et Decadence des Bomains proceeds largely 
from Bossuet 's Discours. 

The Connaissance de Dieu is an elementary treatise of 
philosophy, outside of theology, in which Bossuet proves the 
existence of God and the immortality of the soul; by argu- 
ments borrowed from Descartes. In the chapters demonstrat- 
ing the existence of a supreme intelligence by the perfection 
of its works, there is found an anatomic description of the 
human body, in which the minute exactitude of detail is 
equaled only by the clearness of exposition and the happy 
coloring of the style. 

The Politique is the theory of absolute government : kings 
are established by God, and are responsible only to Him. 
They must do good for their people; but if they stray from 
this duty, the people are none the less obliged to obey, and 
they never have the right to remind kings of their duties. 
This work is composed essentially of passages from the Bible, 
accompanied by a short commentary. We must admit that 
Bossuet often forces the text to draw from it his principles. 
The Protestant Jurien, who answered Bossuet, used the same 
texts and several others which Bossuet had neglected, to 
establish the principle of the sovereignty of the people, and 
of the people's right to demand an account from the king 
of the use he has made of his power. Louis XIV had had 
disputes with the Pope as a temporal sovereign ; x he seized 
this occasion to have it decided by the clergy just what might 
be the reciprocal rights of kings and popes. An ecclesiastical 
assembly was called in 1681. Bossuet presided, and delivered 
his discourse on the Unity of the Church. The assembly ac- 
cepted the opinions of the councils of Bale and Constance, 
which had declared the general councils superior to popes. 
It ruled, furthermore, that, in ordinary circumstances, the 
decisions of the Pope could not be valid except inasmuch as 
they were approved by all the clergy — an approval which 
would be established by the absence of all complaint. These 
rules, which were worked out by Bossuet, constitute what is 

1 The king claimed the right to collect the revenues of the vacant 
bishoprics; the Pope opposed this claim. 
17 241 



- 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

called the liberties of the Gallican Church. The articles 
provoked violent attacks from the Pope's adherents, and 
Bossuet answered in a new work entitled Defense de la decla- 
ration du clerge de France. In it he places the spiritual power 
above the temporal power, and demonstrates that the doctrine 
of the infallibility of the Pope dates only from the fifteenth 
century. 

The last theological struggle of Bossuet, was that which 
he had to sustain against Fenelon on the subject of Quietism. 1 
Fenelon in his Explication des Maximes des Saints seemed to 
approve this doctrine, and was attacked by Bossuet, and 
censured by the Pope; but Fenelon appeared greater in his 
defeat than Bossuet in victory. Then Quietism disappeared 
almost entirely. 2 

Bossuet is not only an illustrious theologian; he is also 
the greatest religious orator of France. His sermons had 
made him famous before his books. He did not compose them 
in advance; he confined himself to outlining the plan and 
writing a few brilliant passages; then, after having steeped 
himself in his subject, he mounted the pulpit and abandoned 
himself to the inspiration of the moment. It is these sketches 
of sermons that have been recovered; even in this imperfect 
state they are yet superior to the completed works of many 
other orators. Among the doctors of the church, Saint 
Chrysostom was Bossuet 's model for eloquence, and Saint 
Augustine his guide for the study of religion. 

But the triumph of Bossuet is the funeral oration. No 
one has equalled him in this kind of discourse, which displays 
him in all the pomp of eloquence. Three of these orations 
especially are placed in the first rank, because of the interest 

1 Quietism is the mystical doctrine which makes Christian perfection 
consist in love of God and inaction of the soul, without exterior works. 
Quietism had representatives in all epochs. Its best-known chief was the 
Spanish priest, Molinos, who, toward the middle of the seventeenth century, 
published an ascetic book idealizing religion to such a degree that it became 
incomprehensible to the common people. The celebrated Madame Guyon 
adopted the ideas of Molinos, and wrote about Quietism. (Larousse.) 

2 The hard and obdurate character which Bossuet showed to the Prot- 
estants, he also made known to his illustrious colleague, Fenelon, in the 
great quarrel on Quietism. 

242 



LA CHAIRE 

of the subject and the manner in which the orator has adorned 
it. In the funeral oration on the Queen of England — daughter 
of Henry IV, and wife of Charles I, whom the English revolu- 
tion had sent to the scaffold — Bossuet traces in bold strokes 
both the progress of the Anglican heresy and the history of the 
revolution accomplished, and makes an oratorical portrait of 
Cromwell which has remained famous. The funeral oration 
on the daughter of this queen, Henriette d 'Angleterre, and 
especially the oration on the Prince de Conde* — the great 
Conde — permitted the orator to make the most brilliant pic- 
tures. Conde had figured in the Thirty Years' War, and in 
the Fronde; Bossuet 's recital of the battle of Rocroy, and his 
comparison of the impetuosity of Conde with tjie wise delibera- 
tion of Turenne, are the salient parts of this work. But a 
passage truly sublime is the peroration in which the orator 
calls on all men of all ranks to come and render homage to 
the illustrious dead ; ' ' then, in a trembling voice, returning 
to himself and indicating his white hair, he bids farewell to 
his audience, and announces that henceforth he shall con- 
secrate to God alone the remnants of a weakening voice and 
an ardor which is dying. ' ' 

The eloquence of Bossuet possessed the quality of boldness 
and primitive strength. He kept before him one idea — to 
strike vigorously into the minds of his auditors the religious 
truths he announced. To attain this end, he found, as if by 
instinct, the most magnificent parallels, the grandest images; 
his ardent imagination animated all, and when he showed the 
nothingness of human things and the pettiness of men before 
God, he filled the mind with terror. 

La Bruyere has eulogized him by calling him a " Father 
of the Church." His name belongs among the great scholars 
who have defended dogma, and among the writers who have 
employed the French language with the greatest force and 
eloquence. The Meditations sur I'Evangile, and the Eleva- 
tions sur les Mysteres are still classed with his best produc- 
tions; but his best-known works are his Oraisons Funebres, 
and his Discours sur I'Histoire Universelle. 

Bossuet, in spite of his immense superiority, was not an 
orator according to the standards of the seventeenth century. 
He rises to great heights, but he falls again ; he is sublime, but 

243 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

uneven. In the time of Louis XIV, men especially loved regu- 
larity, measure. Bossuet was the theologian of the epoch, but 
the orator was Bourdaloue. He died in 1704. 



BOURDALOUE 

Louis Bourdaloue, born at Bourges in 1632, entered the 
Society of Jesus at the age of sixteen years. All his life he 
was occupied with two things only — confession and preaching ; 
it was in the confessional that he gathered the material 
for his sermons. These were not improvised in part, like 
Bossuet 's; they were scholarly compositions, carefully thought 
out, written at leisure; and delivered with lowered eyes, to 
avoid all distraction. Bourdaloue considered his subject in three 
or four ways, which made the subdivisions of his discourse; 
then he entered into the points at issue without ever letting 
himself be turned from his object; an admirable logician, his 
logic was so powerful, he entwined you, he held, and you 
could not escape him. Madame de Sevigne, who admired him, 
has noted the peculiar effect of his eloquence on his audience : 
" He has often taken my breath by the extreme attention 
with which one listens to the force and justness of his argu- 
ments. I breathed only when he was pleased to end." The 
Marechal de Gramont was once so absorbed by the force of the 
orator's deductions that he exclaimed in the very midst of the 
sermon, " Zounds, he is right! " Another time, the Prince 
de Conde, seeing him enter the pulpit of Saint-Sulpice, cried, 
" Silence, here is the enemy! " Boileau deferred nobly to 
his great faculties as a moralist when he said, " In satire on 
women I am only the ape of Bourdaloue. ' ' * 

This eloquence of Bourdaloue was of a peculiar nature, 
it consisted neither in the movement of his discourse, nor in 
brilliant phrases, nor in great and beautiful images : it arose 
from his array of proofs, from the clear and facile presenta- 
tion of ideas. " There is not in Bourdaloue, ' ' said Joubert, 
" either perfect precision or volubility." He pleased es- 

1 After one of Bourdaloue's sermons, Louis XIV said to him: "Father, 
you ought to be satisfied with me; Madame de Montespan is in Clagny." 
"Yes, Sire," answered Bourdaloue, "but God would be more satisfied if 
Clagny were seventy leagues from Versailles." 

244 



LA CHAIRE 

pecially by his fortitude and truth. Many of his sermons, 
however, have lost for us much of their interest. The 
enormous partitions and subdivisions of his subject, wrought 
with a view to the salvation of dependent souls, are somewhat 
fatiguing. He is interesting to the modern reader chiefly for 
such sermons as Sur Madeleine, Sur la Pensee de la Mort, 
Sur la Severite Evangelique, Sur la Medisance (Slander). 

Bourdaloue was active up to the time of his death, in 1704, 
in vain appealing to his superiors for permission to rest. He 
had lived to see the first successes of Massillon, and had 
pronounced thereon the words of Saint John the Baptist: 
* ' He must wax great, but I must perish. ' ' Massillon, indeed, 
became great; but Bourdaloue in the eyes of posterity has 
remained greater. 

FENELON 

Francois de Salignac de La Mothe de Fenelon, born at 
the chateau de Fenelon in Perigord, in 1651, was also a cele- 
brated prelate and preacher ; but only two of his sermons have 
been preserved. The vivid imagination, the penetrating im- 
pressiveness of the orator in these two productions make us 
regret most emphatically the loss of the others; but Fenelon 
improvised his sermons, and rarely took the trouble of tracing 
their plan in writing. He preached with enthusiasm without 
preparation. He is in contrast with Bossuet: it is the spirit 
of sweetness opposed to that of force. 

Saint-Simon has given us an admirable portrait of Fenelon. 
He has dwelt upon this prelate's noble manner, the seduction 
in his face, the desire he had to please everyone, and the 
ease with which he succeeded. The air of the grand seigneur 
with which he invested every word and action enhanced his 
dignity without ever imparting to it the spirit of pride and 
disdain. He had the charm which delights men's minds and 
hearts. These same qualities are found in his works — ex- 
quisitely replete with Christian sweetness and Attic grace. 
Nothing is more precious than his little treatise on L' Educa- 
tion des Filles. He shows in this treatise the importance of 
the early education of women, who, being called upon some 
day to become mothers of families, must in their turn be the 
first teachers of their children ; and he emphatically criticises 

245 



_ 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the ignorance in which the young are left. He wishes children 
to be instructed while being interested, by amusing them, and 
making them study things rather than books. We should not, 
he tells us, limit ourselves to teaching them religion ; we mast 
make them love it. As for their defects, we must try to 
prevent these from birth, in order not to have to repress them 
when developed. The treatise ends with a chapter on the 
duties of women, and advice on the means of making capable 
governesses. 

Chosen as the preceptor of the Due de Bourgogne, grand- 
son of Louis XIV, Fenelon composed several works of instruc- 
tion. His Fables in prose, and his Dialogues des Morts gently 
insinuated into the mind of his pupil the general principles 
of morality. Telemaque was intended to teach him political 
science and the art of reigning. This singular novel is a very 
beautiful work of imagination and politics. In it Fenelon 
shows himself less desirous of making his pupil careful of 
his rights than to preserve him from the pitfalls of luxury, 
and the dangers of despotism. The political ideas set forth 
carry the author into the eighteenth century and make him 
the forerunner of Montesquieu and Rousseau. He showed 
that the apparently glorious age was undermined by the in- 
justice, egotism, pride, and rapacity of the great. 

Telemaque is the development of an episode in the Odyssey. 
In the Homeric poem, Telemachus, tired of waiting for his 
father, who has not yet returned from the siege of Troy, 
takes it upon himself to seek him. This voyage, which 
occupies a minor place in the ancient poem, is the subject of 
Fenelon 's book. Telemachus travels through Sicily, Egypt, 
Phoenicia, the Isle of Crete, Magna Grseeia, or Southern Italy 
— sometimes threatened with death ; a slave, a king, a general ; 
at times alone, more frequently in the company of the goddess 
of wisdom, who has taken the form of Mentor, his governor, 
in order to inspire in him the ideas of an ideal morality, of 
a sound political theory, and devotion to humanity. Here 
and there are graceful and interesting pictures that divert 
the reader; such are: the sojourn of Telemachus in the island 
of Ogygia, where Calypso ruled, and his descent into the 
subterranean fires — passages containing an admirable picture 
of the happiness of good men in another life ; the adventures 

246 



LA CHAIRE 

of Philoctetes, abandoned in the Isle of Lemnos— and so on. 
Fenelon criticises ostentation, conquests, absolute power — that 
is to say, the whole governmental system of Louis XIV — 
most unfavorably. Louis XIV would not pardon the writer, 
and Cambrai was the place of exile where the prelate passed 
his life, far from the king and the favors of the court. It 
meant much to have drawn upon himself the hatred of the 
prince; but he suffered a greater misfortune when, in em- 
bracing Quietism in his Maximes des Saints, he incurred the 
censures of Bossuet and the Holy See. Condemned by Pope 
Innocent XII for this work, Fenelon gave a great example of 
Christian submission when he himself announced to his 
diocesans the sentence passed upon him, and forbade the read- 
ing of his book. This prompt submission brought him more 
honor than the victory won by Bossuet through violence. 
" The Eagle of Meaux " was not satisfied until he had 
silenced " the Swan of Cambrai, " * whose incontestable merit 
perhaps overshadowed him, and whose fine action prompted 
the Pope's severe criticism of Bossuet: " If Fenelon loves 
God, Bossuet does not love his neighbor." Fenelon died in 
1715. 

FLECHIER 

Esprit Flechier, son of a chandler, was born in 1636 at 
Pernes, a small city of the diocese of Carpentras, and died in 
1710. He began by being a bel esprit, very fond of the graces 
of style, and ended as a bishop (of Nimes), commendable and 
grave. He had the good sense never to be ashamed of his origin. 
Someone in his presence commented on the strange fact that 
the holder of an episcopal see should have emerged from a shop. 
" If you had been born in my place," replied Flechier, " it 
is probable that you would still be making candles." He 
composed a large number of funeral orations. The first is a 
tribute of gratitude to Madame de Montausier, the same Julia, 
who with her mother, presided at the soirees of the Hotel de 
Rambouillet : the orator delights in tracing the charm of these 
reunions where there were " gathered so many persons of 

1 Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux, was called VAigle de Meaux, and Fenelon, 
Bishop of Cambrai, le Cygne de Cambrai. 

247 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

quality and merit; where there was wisdom without pride, 
polish without affectation." His masterpiece is the funeral 
oration of Turenne, in which, by dint of art, he rises to 
eloquence in recounting the military exploits, and especially 
the death of Turenne, struck by a cannon ball in the midst of 
battle. There still exist some panegyrics by Flechier, and two 
mediocre Histoires. The most curious of his writings has 
been known only since 1884. It is his Memoires sur les Grands 
Jours d'Auvergne, a recital, at once piquant and grave, of the 
repression that should be exercised on the exactions of the 
lords of Auvergne. It is an infinitely instructive chapter of 
history, as well as a work full of life, well planned, and 
written in the best language. At this time (in 1665) crime 
was fitly suppressed in the cities; but in the countryside, 
especially in the mountains, there were noble families who 
were veritable brigands, who, by means of terrorizing or cor- 
ruption, were assured of immunity. Nevertheless, there were 
occasions when justice took its course; from time to time, at 
undetermined periods, the king would suddenly send a com- 
mission charged with receiving the complaints of the poor 
people, and condemning without pity all the guilty ones, 
whoever they might be. This is what was called the ' ' Grands 
Jours." The commission sent out in 1665, discovered a series 
of horrible crimes, unpunished, and pronounced sentence of 
death with confiscation of property on more than three hun- 
dred nobles. Flechier, who was a tutor in the home of one 
of the influential members of this extraordinary tribunal, 
makes a chronicle of these atrocities in an ingenious and fas- 
cinating style. 

The style of Flechier — very labored, wise, symmetrical, 
and antithetical — has nothing of true eloquence and profound 
inspiration ; a little slow, it is, nevertheless, worth studying as 
an example of art employing the artifices of elocution. It is 
said that Flechier received lessons in this art, and that he had 
studied under a master who bound himself to make orators in 
a given time. Villemain called him the French Socrates. 



LA CHAIRE 

MASSILLON 

Jean Baptiste Massillon was born in 1663 at Hyeres, in 
Provence. He belonged to a family of small birth, and 
entered into the congregation of the Oratoire, preached at the 
court from 1699 to 1719, and passed the rest of his life at 
Clermont, Auvergne, of which he had been named bishop, and 
where he died in 1742. 

The first time he preached before Louis XIV, in the midst 
of a court entertained only by the glory of the king, he took 
as his text these words of the Gospel : ' l Happy are those who 
weep ' ' ; and he had the skill to draw from this a high lesson 
of morality, while at the same time conveying very delicate 
flattery for the king. Louis XIV, later, said to him : ' ' Father, 
I have heard great orators; I have been very content with 
them. Every time that I have heard you, I have been very 
much discontented with myself.' ' When the king died, 
Massillon, who alone remained of the century's great orators, 
paid the last tributes of France to the memory of Louis. The 
oration begins with a sublime sentence. The king, during his 
lifetime, had been overwhelmed with flattery, and hailed with 
the title, " Great." Massillon, looking over the heads of the 
assembly, and seeing the royal cenotaph, exclaimed: " God 
alone is great, my brethren! " These words have redounded 
more to Massillon 's glory than all the rest of his work. Louis 
XV was at that time only seven years old; nevertheless, 
Massillon was asked to preach before him, and it was on this 
occasion that he composed the Petit Careme, an epitome of ten 
sermons, addressed less to the young king than to his entourage. 
Everything in the Petit Careme hinges on the duties of 
superiors toward inferiors. There are, beneath the touching 
gentleness of the orator, certain tendencies which were in ac- 
cord with the sentiments of the philosophers of the epoch; 
moreover, these philosophers held Massillon in singular esteem. 
Voltaire, who always kept one of Massillon 's volumes on his 
table, admired very much the effectiveness of his diction, and 
the rare purity of his style, saying of him: " He is the 
preacher who knew the world best; more flowery than Bour- 
daloue, more agreeable, and with an eloquence which bespeaks 
the courtier, the academician, and the man of brains; withal, 
a moderate and tolerant philosopher. ' ' 

249 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Massillon wrote his sermons and learned them by heart, 
like Bourdaloue; but while reciting them, he cast his eyes 
on the audience, and his gestures added to the charm of the 
sermon — for he exercised a veritable charm. Bossuet had 
addressed himself to the imagination, Bourdaloue to reason; 
Massillon addressed himself to the heart. The first preached 
dogma ; the second, dogma and morality ; the third, especially 
morality. Although he did not astound his hearers like 
Bossuet, he sometimes attained effects of great eloquence. We 
are told, for instance, that in his sermon on the Petit N ombre 
des Elus (On the Chosen Few), at the moment when he said, 
" If Jesus should suddenly appear in the midst of us, how 
many righteous men would he find? " — the whole audience 
rose in astonishment. This sermon made so great a sensation 
in Paris that Massillon was called to Versailles to preach be- 
fore Louis XIV. It is said of the bellringer of St. Eustache, 
in Paris, where the sermon was preached, that he went about 
exclaiming : * * It is I, it is I who have rung in the famous ser- 
mon." The sermon on " Alms," and that on the " Sanctity 
of the Christian," produced analogous effects. These works 
are part of the Grand Careme, which is composed of forty- 
two sermons. 

Massillon was the last great orator of the seventeenth- 
century pulpit. The following extract is from " On the 
Chosen Few ": 

" I shall confine myself to you, my brethren, who are here 
assembled. I do not speak of the rest of men, I regard you 
as if you were the only ones on earth ; and this is the thought 
which occupies and terrifies me. I am supposing that this is 
your last hour, and the end of the world ; that the heavens are 
about to open over your heads, and Jesus Christ to appear in 
His glory in the midst of this temple, and that you are 
assembled in it only to await Him like trembling criminals on 
whom one is to pronounce either a sentence of forgiveness or 
a decree of eternal death. For there is no use flattering your- 
selves ; you will die such as you are to-day. All these desires 
for change which beguile you will continue to do so until 
your deathbed; it is the experience of all epochs. All that 
you will then find in yourselves that is new will, perhaps, be 
a little greater reckoning than that which you would have to 

250 



LA CHAIRE 

render to-day; and from what you would be if it came to 
judging you at this moment, you can almost decide what will 
happen to you at your death." 



FORENSIC ELOQUENCE 

Previous to Louis XIII, the eloquence which characterized 
the bar was bombastic and in bad taste. The lawyer confined 
himself to an empty display of knowledge in matters of no 
moment, and forsook argument for long citations of the poets 
and of Latin authors. The judges, in their turn, were forced 
to listen to these prolix, absurd and pretentious dissertations 
which Racine so aptly ridicules in his comedy, Les Plaideurs. 

Olivier Patru contributed mostly to the reform of forensic 
eloquence. His success was due to the rectitude of his judg- 
ment, the purity of his style, and the restraint of his citations. 
His fault lay in his too carefully polished phrases, which 
lacked inspiration and impulse. After thirty years of law 
practice, he devoted himself to literary work, and divided the 
honors with Vaugelas as master of the French language. He 
was received into the Academy, where he introduced the cus- 
tom of the Discours de renter dements, a custom which still 
prevails. This innovation was called eloquence academique. 

Paul Pellisson is cited as a forensic orator on account of 
his Memoires in defense of Fouquet, whose friend and 
protege he was, and to whom he remained faithful until the 
unfortunate minister's death. Pellisson braved the wrath of 
Louis XIV, who had condemned Fouquet, and even partook 
of his captivity for four years in the Bastille, where he com- 
posed his Memoires. He was refused ink and paper, so he 
wrote on the margin of his books with a mixture of toasted 
bread dissolved in wine. His Memoires are a masterpiece of 
dialectics and of style. After he left the Bastille, Louis XIV, 
to reward him for so much fidelity, accorded him a pension 
and some lucrative offices. 



CHAPTER XVII 



LB SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 



Corneille, Descartes, Pascal, filled the first half of 
that greatest of French literary epochs — the seventeenth cen- 
tury. Notwithstanding the diversity of their genius, these 
three men are related to one another by certain ties of the 
intellect. The characteristics which they possess in common 
are spiritual nobility, a sublime fervor, a simplicity in grand- 
eur. " We feel," says Demogeot, " that a majestic harmony 
is established among these most illustrious representatives of 
French thought. But though they had a bond of unity in 
the spirit of the century, they lacked a center of government. 
Meanwhile, there was growing up, amid the bloody frivolities 
of the Fronde, the man who was first to give to France what 
she most desired — the severe unity which is her strength and 
glory. 

* ' Royalty — the material personification of a people — was at 
that time the only form under which the nation could see and 
understand itself ; and Louis XIV * was the most glorious ex- 
pression of that royalty. His person seemed made for the 
role: his figure, his carriage, his beauty, and his stately air, 
all bespoke the sovereign ; a natural majesty accompanied all 
his actions, and commanded respect. His deficiency of educa- 
tion was offset by great good sense. He had especially the 
instinct of power — the feeling of the necessity of directing 
destinies, together with that faith in himself so essential to 
the exercise of ^command over others. Besides, he took posses- 
sion without diffidence of all the living forces of the nation. 
He entered into his epoch as if into his house. His maxim 
of rule was quite opposed to that of vulgar tyranny; he 

1 Son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, born 1638, died 1715. 

252 



LE SlfeCLE DE LOUIS XIV 

wished to unify in order that he might reign. He concen- 
trated at the foot of his throne all that was characterized 
by influence or splendor: nobility, fortune, science, genius, 
bravery, shone about his crown like streams of light. ' ' 

It was fitting that he should be called the Sun King. 
Succeeding to the ministerial supremacy perfected by Riche- 
lieu and Mazarin, Louis XIV, with royal power and authority 
founded absolute monarchy in France. He considered him- 
self the representative of God on earth — as the " participant 
in His knowledge as well as of His authority." All the great 
men as well as the people saw in their king the representative 
of God on earth, and to serve the king meant to serve God. 
He was truly the whole state — ' ' 1 'Etat, c 'est moi, ' ' and every- 
one bent before him, nobility, Parliament, Third Estate, even 
the clergy. Extreme centralization, passive obedience, the 
cult of the royal person raised to the status of dogma, com- 
pleted the absorption of the nation, the incarnation of the 
people in a single man. 

Versailles is the symbolic work of Louis XIV 's reign. It 
reveals its thought, its grandeur, its immense and cruel 
egotism. France paid for the construction of Versailles a sum 
which to-day would equal four hundred millions of francs 
($80,000,000). " Saint-Germain," remarks Saint-Simon, 
" offered to Louis XIV a complete town which its situation 
alone was sufficient to maintain as such. He left it for Ver- 
sailles—the saddest and most ungrateful of all places— with- 
out scenery, without forests, without water or earth, because 
everything there is moving sand and marsh. He decided to 
tyrannize over Nature, to conquer her by force of art and 
wealth. There was only a very miserable tavern in that place ; 
he built there an entire city." 

Jules Hardouin Mansard x constructed the place. Charles 
Lebrun 2 was occupied for eighteen years in decorating it. 

1 It is to Francois Mansard, great-uncle of the above, that the inven- 
tion of the Mansard roofs is attributed. 

2 Charles Lebrun, a famous painter (1619-1690), profited by his singular 
favor with Louis XIV to procure the foundation of a French school at 
Rome in 1666. Young Frenchmen of talent are sent to this academy at 
Rome, to study painting, sculpture, and music at the expense of the state. 
The series of "Battles of Alexander" in the Louvre forms the principal 

253 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

He represented the exploits of the Sun King in an allegorical 
manner in twenty-seven paintings on the ceiling of the grand 
gallery, and mythology was the magnificent allegory of which 
Louis XIV was the reality. Conquered nations were personi- 
fied in it. Holland, Germany, Spain, and even Rome bowed 
there to the king. Lebrun was the creator of the Louis XIV 
style. 

A third artist completed Versailles. Le Notre created a 
landscape for this mansion. " Prom the windows of his in- 
comparable glass gallery, Louis saw only that which was 
his own. The entire horizon was his work, for his garden 
comprised the whole of it. Those groves, those straight 
avenues, were only the indefinite extension of the palace; it 
was a vegetable architecture which completed and reproduced 
the architecture in stone. The trees grew only regularly, in 
squares; water, conducted into this arid place at great ex- 
pense, spouted in regular designs. A thousand statues of 
marble and bronze were the mythological pictures of this 
chateau of verdure, and, like those of Lebrun, presented the 
apotheosis of the king and his amours. Louis was, indeed, 
the soul of his court as of his palace. It was he who inspired 
grace and spirit in women, valor and chivalry in soldiers, 
emulation and almost genius in artists. The courtiers lived 
and died at his glance. Far from fleeing display as a burden, 
he was at his ease in his role of king; he played it with the 
satisfaction and happiness of a great artist. He gathered 
about him, and tastefully distributed this brilliant world 
which belonged to him. ' ' 

Louis XIV 's army was the largest and best organized in 
Europe, and his generals the greatest. His diplomacy con- 
trolled all courts. He built monuments, he created academies. 1 

Laws and customs were codified; industry and trade were 
developed; the French nation excelled all others in the arts 

work of Lebrun. * The Louvre had its beginning in a tower erected for 
the louvetiers (masters of the wolf-hounds) in what was then a forest 
abounding in wolves (loups). In our time the Louvre has become the 
richest artistic museum in the world. Its principal architects were Pierre 
Lescot, Lemmercier, Du Cerceau, Claude Perrault, and Visconti. 

1 Of inscriptions and medals, 1663; of sciences, 1666; of music, 1669; of 
architecture, 1671; and others. 

254 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

and sciences ; French writers proclaimed the king as the ideal 
prince, and arrayed his court with the splendors of the em- 
perors of Rome and Byzantium. Versailles with its magnifi- 
cence became the envy of all monarchs. We know that 
under Louis XIV letters and arts were carried to a high 
degree of perfection by a brilliant constellation of prose 
writers, poets, and painters: Corneille, Racine, Moliere, in 
the drama; La Fontaine and Boileau in poetry; Bossuet, 
Fenelon, Flechier, in oratory; La Bruyere and La Roche- 
foucauld in moral criticism; Pascal in philosophy; Saint- 
Simon and de Retz in history; Poussin, Le Lorrain, Lebrun, 
Perrault, Mansard, Girardon, Puget, in art — these were the 
principal representatives of the century of Louis XIV. More- 
over, letters not only reflected the regularity of the Great 
Reign, but they received from it elegance and grace. The 
society of women; the intrigues of the heart, the science of 
the passions; the sprightly conversations, with no real basis, 
in which verbal embroidery was everything, in which the 
need of saying everything, the obligation of concealing certain 
things, was imperative. 

In this epoch written conversation became the literary 
type. The preceding age had expressed itself especially in 
Memoires. The seventeenth century also had its Memoire 
writers : Mademoiselle de Montpensier, Madame de Motteville, 
Madame de La Fayette, Madame de Caylus; La Rochefou- 
cauld, Louis XIV himself, and Bussy-Rabutin, whose scan- 
dalous chronicle Histoire amoureuse des Gaules, a cynical 
description of the adventures of the ladies of the court, 
brought him into disfavor with the court, and caused his im- 
prisonment in the Bastille ; Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz, 
eclipsed all his rivals by the fire of his narrations and the 
depth of his portraits. 

The French language reached its perfection in this epoch. 
Voltaire in his Steele de Louis XIV says: " The language 
under Louis XIV was carried to the highest state of perfec- 
tion in all genres." A talent for conversation — brilliant and 
flexible as well as elegant — was developed under the reign of 
Louis XIV. This art, practiced by society, produced a rich 
literary genre — the epistolary. No literature has anything of 
this type to compare with the names of Ninon de L'Enclos, 

255 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

Mesdames de Montespan, de Coulanges, de la Sabliere, de 
Maintenon. But the most celebrated name of all is that of 
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, Marquise de Sevigne (1626-1696), 
whose correspondence has a place among the masterpieces of 
the century. She was the joy and sunbeam of this distin- 
guished and polished society. Sainte-Beuve has described 
Madame de Sevigne as a laughing blonde, very sprightly and 
roguish. The brightness of her mind passed into and shone 
in her changing eyes, and, as she says herself, in her " parti- 
colored iris." She received a classic education and shone at 
the court of Louis XIII by her brilliance of mind rather than 
her beauty. Separated from her husband, she devoted herself 
to her children, and when the Marquis de Sevigne was killed in 
a duel, she never married again, although only twenty-six years 
old. Madame de Sevigne went into the world beloved, sought 
after, courted, sowing unfortunate passions round about her, 
without in the least meaning it. Her cousin, Bussy-Rabutin ; 
her preceptor, Menage; the Prince of Conti, brother of the 
great Conde; Fouquet and Turenne — all vainly sighed for 
her. A widow at twenty-six, with a great fortune and remark- 
able beauty, she devoted herself entirely to her two children, 
especially her daughter, the handsome and cold Madame de 
Grignan, for whom she had up to the end of her life an ex- 
treme passion. Arnauld, of the Port-Royal, scolded her very 
severely, saying that she was a pretty pagan, and that she was 
making of her daughter the idol of her heart. 

It was because of a mother's love, in order to entertain 
her daughter — " majestically tired in the midst of the fetes 
and chicaneries of provincial society " — that she undertook to 
write a series of letters for twenty-five of the most curious 
years of the reign of Louis XIV. The diversity of her studies 
enabled her to become an excellent writer, but the qualities of 
her literary style are such as one does not acquire : imagina- 
tion, sensibility and wit, added to rapidity of touch; un- 
labored and correct phrasing, and a language which does not 
fear the right word, and ignores prudery and timidity. Hers 
was the model of the epistolary genre. Her correspondence, 
like an " enchanted mirror, makes us know the court and 
its intrigues, the king and his mistresses, the church, the 
theater, literature, war, the entertainments, the banquets, and 

256 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

the toilets of the time." All is animated and colored while 
passing through the mind and the pen of this charming woman. 
The abandon and facility of the style contribute to the illu- 
sion. It is a living, spirited conversation, piquant, variegated, 
in which is found all the grace, all the unexpected diction, 
all the heartiness and warmth of a person of great intellect, 
soul, instruction, and reason. 1 

Madame de Sevigne's letters to Charles de Sevigne, to Abbe 
de Coulanges, 2 to Madame de La Fayette show an excellent 
literary style, but the letters addressed to her daughter are most 
exquisite of all. She chats with her daughter and " lets her 
pen trot with loose bridle." In these letters are found the 
French style par excellence — a finely fashioned mind, an 
easily excited imagination, a love for the natural — expressed 
in a firm and facile manner with great simplicity, and a per- 
fection of form which makes Madame de Sevigne the master 
in this particular branch of literature. 

MADAME DE LA FAYETTE' 

The period from 1630 until 1660 was one of the great 
epochs of the French novel, and literature was almost entirely 
limited to fiction. The novels of Mademoiselle de Scudery 
marked a transition from the novel of La Calprenede (the 
prince of romantic fiction) to the novel of Madame de La 
Fayette. These novels of Mademoiselle de Scudery offered 
a psychological as well as historic interest. " The novels of 
Madame de La Fayette," says Geruzez, " were more than a 
novelty; they were almost a revolution." But it was the 
revolution of good sense, good taste, and simplicity which 
were to replace the extravagance, the bombast, and the im- 
possible inventions of the old-style novel. The novels of 
Madame de La Fayette have remained the very type of moral 
analysis. Her first attempt was Zayde, a story of adven- 

1 The best edition of Madame de Sevigne's letters was prepared by Paul 
Mesnard for the series of Les Grands Ecrivains de la France. 

2 Madame de Sevigne's uncle, the Abbe de Coulanges, directed the edu- 
cation of his niece who, orphaned when a child, proved the joy and happi- 
ness of " le Bien Bon, " as she called .the Abbe\ 

3 Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, Comtesse de La Fayette 
(1634-1693). 

18 257 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ture and sentimentalism — a transition between the heroic 
romance of Mademoiselle de Scudery and the psychologi- 
cal novel. The scene is laid in Spain; the hero and heroine, 
at their first meeting, cannot understand each other except by 
gestures, since one is Arabian and the other Spanish. When 
they meet again, the Arabian girl speaks Spanish and the 
Spaniard, Arabian; they blush and understand. 

La Princesse de Cleves is far superior to Zayde. It is a 
novel in which passion is analyzed with much delicacy and 
decorum — a modern novel. The chief scene is that in which 
M. de Cleves, astonished at seeing his wife determined to re- 
main in the country, questions her, and learns that she is 
fleeing from the Due de Nemours, who loves her, and whose 
love she returns. M. de Cleves dies, some time after this, 
from chagrin and jealousy. This leaves his widow free to 
marry the duke, who still loves her; but she reproaches her- 
self for the sentiments she had entertained toward him during 
the lifetime of her husband, and retires to a convent. The 
period of this story is nominally the reign of Henry II; but 
we feel ourselves fully in the seventeenth century, at the court 
of Louis XIV; the Duchesse de Valentinois is Madame de 
Montespan ; Marie Stuart is but another name for the Duchesse 
d 'Orleans; in the Prince of Cleves, we detect M. de La Fay- 
ette ; the Due de Nemours is no other than La Rochefoucauld. 
La Rochefoucauld, who was a fast friend of Madame de La 
Fayette, had a great influence on her literary development ; her 
work became more thoughtful and psychologically deeper. 
" He gave me wit, but I have reformed his heart," she said. 
Madame de Sevigne wrote : ' ' Nothing could be compared to 
the confidence and charm of their friendship." 

Madame de La Fayette has left memoirs of this court ; also 
a Vie d'Henriette d'Angleterre, in which the author enters 
into very intimate details, so that one might fancy himself 
to be reading a real novel. It is all written in a distinguished 
style, and with a precision which is not in the least affected. 



LA ROCHEFOUCAULD 

Frangois, Due de La Rochefoucauld, and Prince de Mar- 
sillac, born at Paris in 1613, died 1680, was the great initiator 

258 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

in moral studies. He took part in the Fronde, but it was less 
from political conviction than to please the Duchesse de 
Longueville. He left curious Memoires of this epoch, written 
in a firm and precise style, but much less interesting than those 
of de Retz. The book which has. made the reputation of 
La Rochefoucauld, is his little collection of Maximes. 1 He 
frequented the salon of Madame de Sable, and there he got 
his inspiration for them. Every salon of the seventeenth 
century favored some special development of a literary genre : 
Mademoiselle de Scudery's was noted for its madrigals and 
verses, the Princesse de Montpensier 's for literary portraits, 
and Madame de Sable 's for maxims. The maxims of La Roche- 
foucauld are masterpieces of style; no one before him had 
attained to his precision and clearness, to his skill in putting 
an edge on thought. 

The philosophic system of La Rochefoucauld deserves less 
eulogy ; it is bitter and pessimistic. For him all human actions 
have no other motive than self-love, and his whole book is, 
in the last analysis, only this thought recurring in a hundred 
different ways. He reasons thus: virtue has its recompense, 
but in being virtuous it is only our desire to gain the recom- 
pense. He does not admit that a good action may be per- 
formed naturally and disinterestedly. He judged the human 
race by the fault finders with whom he had lived ; in his last 
years he became completely saddened and misanthropic. The 
following selections from his Maximes are characteristic: 

We should gain more by letting ourselves be seen as we are than as 
we are not. 

Narrow-mindedness makes obstinacy; we do not easily believe in 
that which is beyond our range of vision. 

How can we expect that another will keep our secret if we have not 
been able to keep it ourselves? 

In order to know things well, we must know them in detail ; and, 
since this is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and 
imperfect. 

As it is the characteristic of great minds to make many things 
understood with few words, so — on the contrary — little minds have 
the gift of talking a great deal and saying nothing. 

1 The full title is Reflexions et Sentences, ou Maximes Morales. 
259 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The desire to appear skillful often prevents our becoming so. 

.The true way to be deceived is to believe oneself shrewder than 
others. 

The mind is always the dupe of the heart. 

Everyone complains of his memory, and no one complains of his 
judgment. 

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers. 

It needs greater virtues to sustain good fortune than bad. 

We are never so ridiculous by the qualities which we have as by 
those which we pretend to have. 

Passions are the only orators which always persuade. They are 
like a kind of nature whose rules are infallible; and the simplest man 
who has passion is more persuasive than the most eloquent who has 
none. 

Epigrams, like proverbs, are the condensation of thought. 
In the case of proverbs, the condensation is often accomplished 
through the process of ages and the friction of many minds. 
The epigram, when it is the work of one man, is recast by him 
again and again, until he can compress it no more. In a first 
edition of the Maximes, we read : ' ' There is no pleasure which 
one gives so willingly to a friend as that of offering our ad- 
vice. ' ' In a later collection this becomes : ' ' We give nothing 
so liberally as our advice." 



LE CARDINAL DE RETZ 

Paul de Gondi, Cardinal of Retz, born at Montmirail in 
1614, died 1679, was destined from his childhood to the eccle- 
siastical career, for which he was little suited. Dr. Retz had 
begun by telling, in a little work full of energy, the same Con- 
juration de Fiesque from which Schiller took one of his 
dramas. Richelieu, to whom they brought this composition of 
an eighteen-year-old writer, exclaimed : ' ' There is a dangerous 
mind! " In 1643, after being appointed coadjutor of the 
Archbishop of Paris (Henri de Gondi, his uncle), he put him- 
self at the front in the Fronde. He became a Frondeur to 
gratify Madame de Longueville ; he himself has explained it : 
' ' To please her beautiful eyes, I made war on kings, I would 
have warred against gods." De Retz was the historian of the 
Fronde. After the defeat of the Frondeurs at the battle of 

260 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

the Faubourg Saint- Antoine, he made his peace with the court 
and received the cardinal's hat. Mistress of all power, Anne 
of Austria had him arrested; but he succeeded in escaping 
from his prison and left the kingdom. When he returned to 
France he gave up politics and finished his life in retirement, 
writing his Memoires — a model of that kind of informal 
history which flourished in the seventeenth century. 



LA BRUYERE 

Jean de La Bruyere, born at Paris in 1645, died 1696, was 
for some time treasurer in the district of Caen. On the recom- 
mendation of Bossuet, the great Conde engaged him to teach 
history to his grandson, the Duke of Bourbon. La Bruyere 
was, above all, a man of honor ; this is the opinion of Boileau, 
Saint-Simon, and all of his contemporaries. Virtue was for 
him a kind of beauty. He lived in a sort of retirement ; and 
in so far as he was a man of the world, he looked at the scene 
without becoming an actor. 

" He was," says Saint-Simon, " very disinterested. He 
was content all his life with a pension of a thousand crowns, 
which the duke gave hiin," as preceptor for his grandson 
Louis de Bourbon. His patron, the duke, was " brutal, 
vicious, and of an unbearably ferocious character.' ' The 
duchess was a ' ' scornful, mocking, sarcastic person, incapable 
of friendship, and very capable of hatred ; wicked, proud, im- 
placable, with a fertile mind for black artifices, and the most 
cruel songs, which she inflicted on people whom she pretended 
to love, who lived with her." La Bruyere suffered much 
from these eccentricities, and from the haughty disdain and 
humiliating condescension to which he was subjected by 
friends of the house. 

Taine tells us that " the great lords of the time considered 
men of letters and artists as a kind of amusing domestics. 
The Pope requested the king " to lend him Mansard," as 
you would request your friend to lend you his horse or his 
dog. We find in La Bruyere 's book no less than twenty 
" thoughts " on the scorn attached to the condition of a sub- 
ordinate and man of letters. The points which he makes are 
penetrating and profound; yet we can always read between 

261 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the lines an animus underlying the moral eloquence of his 
work. We can often recognize the restrained and bitter 
smile of a superior soul which sees that it is scorned, and 
returns a hundredfold, but in silence, the contempt it has 
endured. Unfortunately, this too frequent and too pervasive 
sentiment soon poisons all the others. We end by becoming in- 
capable of gayety, or even of calmness; we no longer see in 
the vices of man the interior necessity which renders them 
endurable, nor in the follies of the world the agreeable non- 
sense which makes them amusing. We lose our serene philos- 
ophy and sense of humor; we become satirical and misan- 
thropic. The feeling of sadness increases, everything becomes 
tense and strained ; the author speaks only in insulting tirades, 
or rasping, reproachful phrases. This is, indeed, the habitual 
tone of La Bruyere; his style, however perfect it is, fatigues 
the reader; the extreme and painful emotions which fill the 
work are communicated to him; we wish harm when we have 
read his books, and we wish it to the whole race. He leaves, 
with more force and less monotony, the same impression left 
by Rousseau; both were profoundly and incessantly wounded 
by the disproportion of their genius and their fortune, and 
their secret chagrin has embittered and colored all their 
work.'' . . . 

La Bruyere was at heart gracious and full of tender- 
ness — traits which come to the surface at times, but are 
almost always concealed by his biting satire. The chapter 
on the heart, and that on women, are sown with noble and 
exquisite thought, contrasting strongly with the bitter irony 
of the rest, and affording a glimpse of what he might have 
been if circumstances had not turned him aside toward more 
violent and sadder expressions of literature. ... A final trait, 
common to La Bruyere and Rousseau, marks his character; 
it is the incurable melancholy, the sadness in the very depths 
of his soul, the loss of all illusion, the disgust with men, the 
cruel feeling of human misery. Witness words like these: 
1 ' We must laugh before being happy, for fear of dying before 
having laughed. Life is short, tiresome, it is wholly spent in 
hoping, and we put rest into the future as well as joy, at the 
age when often our best possessions — health and youth — have 
already disappeared. The time comes which overtakes even 

262 



LB SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

our desires ; we are in the midst of them when the fever seizes 
us and we perish: if we had recovered, it would only be to 
hope still longer. " His book attempts to compute in how 
many ways man can be unendurable. 

Jean Formey writes: " He (La Bruyere) came almost 
daily to sit with a bookseller named Michallet, in whose com- 
pany he perused new books and amused himself with a very 
pretty little girl, daughter of the bookseller, who had struck 
up a friendship with him. One day, he drew a manuscript 
from his pocket and said to Michallet : ' Will you print this ? 
I don't know whether you will find it worth while; but in 
case of success, the profit will be for my little friend.' The 
bookseller undertook the edition (Les Caracteres). Scarcely 
had he put it on sale than it was exhausted, and he was 
obliged to reprint the book three or four times ; it brought him 
two or three hundred thousand francs. This was the unfore- 
seen dower of his daughter, who made in consequence a most 
advantageous marriage. ' ' 

La Bruyere 's only work, Les Caracteres, is composed of 
sixteen chapters, in which he passes in review men of letters, 
prelates, women, courtiers, and bourgeois; in which he dis- 
cusses fashion, judgements, the government of states ; or takes 
to task the incredulous ones who were at that time called the 
' ' esprits forts. ' ' The full title of his work is Les caracteres de 
Theophraste 1 traduit du grec avec les caracteres ou les moeurs 
de ce siecle. Here is an extract from Chapter VI, " On the 
Good Things of Fortune; the Rich and the Poor Man ": 

" Giton has a fresh complexion, full face and hanging 
cheeks, a steady and assured glance, broad shoulders, thick 
chest, and a firm and deliberate bearing : he speaks with con- 
fidence, makes the man who is talking to him repeat, and 
enjoys only indifferently what his companion says to him. 
He unfolds a large handkerchief, and blows his nose with a 
great noise; he spits to a great distance, and sneezes very 

1 Ethici Charakteres of Theophrastus, Greek philosopher, 370-288 b.c. 
La Bruyere's translation is a supplement to his own character sketches, of 
which there are 1,119. The Characters of Theophrastus were the original 
models of Hall's Characteristics of Virtues and Vices; of Earle's Microcos- 
mographie ; of Overbury's Characters or Witty Descriptions of the Properties 
of Sundry Persons. 

263 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

loudly ; he sleeps during the day, he sleeps at night, and pro- 
foundly ; he snores in company. At table, and while walking, 
he occupies more space than any other person. He keeps in 
the middle when walking with his equals ; he stops and they 
stop, he continues to walk and they walk; they all regulate 
themselves by him. He interrupts, he corrects those who are 
speaking; he is not interrupted, they listen to him as long 
as he wishes to speak, agree with him in everything, and be- 
lieve the news he relates. If he sits down, you see him en- 
sconce himself in an armchair, cross his legs one over the other, 
knit his brow, lower his hat over his eyes, in order not to 
see anyone; or he raises it after a while and uncovers his 
forehead by way of pride and audacity. He is lively, a great 
laugher, impatient, presumptuous, choleric, free thinker and 
politic, mysterious in regard to the affairs of the time; he 
thinks he has talent and brains. He is rich. 

" Phedon is hollow-eyed, of a flushed complexion, his 
body dried up, his face lean. He sleeps little and very lightly. 
He is absent-minded, a dreamer, and he has the air of an idiot 
in spite of his intellect; he forgets to say what he knows, or 
to speak of events which are known to him, and if he does 
so sometimes, he makes a bungle of it. He thinks he is 
boring those to whom he speaks, so he talks briefly, but with- 
out animation; no one listens to him, he does not make his 
hearers laugh. He applauds and smiles at what others s*y 
to him, he is of their opinion; he runs, he flies to do them 
little services, he is complaisant, a flatterer, officious. He is 
mysterious in his affairs, does not always speak the truth; he 
is superstitious, scrupulous, timid. He walks diffidently and 
lightly, apparently afraid to tread the ground, with eyes 
lowered, and dares not raise them on those who pass. He is 
never among those who form a circle for discussion ; he stands 
behind the one who speaks, furtively notices what is said, 
and retires if he is looked at. He occupies no space, and 
takes up no room. He goes along with bent shoulders, his 
hat lowered over his eyes so that he may not be seen; he 
wraps and conceals himself in his coat ; there are no streets or 
galleries so obstructed and filled with people through which 
he does not find the means of making his way without effort, 
and gliding through without being perceived. If he is asked 

264 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

to sit down, he barely places himself on the edge of the chair. 
He speaks low in conversation and articulates badly; out- 
spoken, nevertheless, on public affairs; discontented with the 
epoch; in a mediocre way, prejudiced against the ministers 
and the ministry. He never opens his mouth except to 
answer ; he coughs, he blows his nose behind his hat, he almost 
spits upon himself, and he waits until he is alone to sneeze — 
or, if this happens in spite of him, it is without the knowl- 
edge of the company, and costs no one either a greeting or a 
compliment. 1 He is poor." 



SAINT-SIMON 

Louis de Rouvray, son of Claude de Saint-Simon, favorite 
of Louis XIII, was born in 1675, at Versailles. The king 
was his sponsor, and he became a page at court, and then a 
soldier. Later, he handed in his resignation, and remained 
at the court without employment. He was a malcontent 
from his birth and by family tradition. He had a great re- 
spect for Louis XIII, ' ' the king of the nobles, ' ' but deplored 
the ' ' long regne de vile bourgeoisie ' ' of Louis XIV. At the 
death of Louis XIV, he favored the party of the Due d 'Or- 
leans, with whom the Due du Maine disputed the regency; 
and he was intrusted by the regent with the mission of negoti- 
ating with Spain the marriage of Louis XV with the Infanta. 
Later he retired to his estates, where he occupied himself with 
the edition of his Memoires, which are very voluminous (123 
volumes). He exercised no influence whatsoever on the litera- 
ture of his time, as he worked with the greatest secrecy. 
His Memoires which, according to his last will, were not to 
appear until fifty years after his death (1725), were con- 
fiscated by the French Government, and taken to the archives 
of the Ministere des affaires etrangeres. They were not per- 
mitted to be made public until 1830. In these Memoires du 
Due de Saint-Simon sur le regne de Louis XIV et la Regence y 
he depicts with admirable penetration the thousand incidents 
of the court, and the physiognomy of the courtiers. 

Saint-Simon had begun to gather the matter for this work 

1 "Dieu vous benisse!" after a sneeze. 
265 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

at the age of nineteen years. Every evening he jotted down, 
without anyone observing him, all that he had seen and heard 
during the day; and it is from these notes, and not from 
more or less vague recollection, that he composed his book. 
It has been said of him, that he was " curious like Froissart, 
penetrating like La Bruyere, and passionate like Alceste in 
Moliere." During all the time of his sojourn at the court, 
Saint-Simon imposed on himself the role of spy on all that 
world which paraded around him — studying faces, noting 
gestures, hearing every word, and seeking to read the very 
bottom of the soul. His Memoires were written in a strange, 
incorrect style. He never revised his sentences and never 
erased a word. " He writes without order (a la diable) for 
posterity/' said Chateaubriand. His portraits also seem 
thrown together, composed at hazard, but with great vigor. 
Saint-Simon is the greatest French word-painter of historical 
portraits. 

The transition from the seventeenth to the eighteenth 
centuries shows a decline in classicism. Fenelon, in his Lettre 
a I'Academie, achieved a victory for the ancients in the 
" Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns," but did not much 
retard the impulse toward modernism. Racine had created 
a school; but among the great number of tragic writers who 
sought to walk in his steps, only a few, such as de Lafosse 
and Crebillon had some dramatic talent united with a certain 
originality. Classic tragedy fell altogether into decadence 
with the dramatic poets, Jean Galbert de Campistron, La- 
grange-Chancel, Longepierre, and tended toward the melo- 
dramatic. Brunetiere tells us that of the many pieces of 
this period, there are not six which are remembered, not even 
one, which one dares represent, and there is not an author 
to whom the history of literature accords more than a pass- 
ing mention. 

Antoine de Lafosse 's (about 1653-1708) tragedy Manlius 
Capitolinus, sat adaptation of Thomas Otway's " Venice Pre- 
served, ' ' had a prodigious success in its time, and was still con- 
sidered a masterpiece by Villemain. It is said, however, that 
the play owed much of its popularity to the masterful inter- 
pretation of the great actor Talma. An interesting document 
preserved in the archives of the Theatre-Frangais reads: 

266 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

" Pass the citizen Bonaparte to this evening's performance 
of Manlius. (Signed) Talma." Of this document, Frederic 
Febvre, in Le Gaulois, relates a story told him by Talma's own 
son. It seems that Emperor Napoleon when he was a lieuten- 
ant of artillery was in the habit of haunting the Palais-Royal 
Galleries in the hope that he might see the tragedian, and that 
Talma, espying him, would whisper to his companion: " The 
other way, if you don't mind. I see Bonaparte coming, and 
I'm afraid he'll ask me for seats." Later, Napoleon, who 
ardently admired Talma, had him appear in a performance 
in Erfurt before an ' ' audience of kings. ' ' 

Prosper Jolyot de Crebillon (1674-1762) tried to intro- 
duce in his tragedies the element of terror which had been 
the fortune of JEschylus. " Corneille," he said, " took 
heaven, Racine the earth; there is nothing left for me but 
hell, and I have thrown myself headlong into it." His plays 
abound in terrible situations and fearful crimes. Thus in 
Atree et Thyeste, the prince is represented as offering to his 
brother, Thyestes, a goblet filled with the blood of his own 
son. Crebillon later tried to remedy this great defect by in- 
troducing tender sentiments, but, for all his expedients, he 
does not move us. 

His best play is Bhadamiste et Zenobie. The subject, 
which is very romantic, was borrowed by the author from a 
novel of the Precieuses school. It concerns a king of Arme- 
nia, who, seeing himself overcome by the Romans, does not 
wish to leave his wife in the power of his enemies. In a fit of 
jealousy he stabs her and casts her into the river. Zenobie is 
saved, and later returns, under a false name, to the presence 
of her husband. The violent character of Rhadamiste, his 
agitated life, his jealousy, and his remorse, are pictured in a 
true and striking manner, and contrast happily with the 
sweet and loving character of Zenobie. Disarmed by this 
feverish love, she finally pardons him, and is reconciled to 
her would-be murderer. This work is the only celebrated 
tragedy that appeared on the French stage in the interval 
which separates Racine from Voltaire. It is said that, acting 
on the advice of a friend, Crebillon read his tragedy to Boi- 
leau, who had grown old and was ill. Boileau listened atten- 
tively enough to the first two scenes; then he rose in anger, 

267 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

crying: " What, Monsieur, you wish to hasten my death by 
reading these detestable verses ! I see in you an author com- 
pared with whom, Scudery and Pradon are shining lights. I 
do not regret to die since my country produces such authors. ' ' 
Brunetiere calls the tragedies of Crebillon melodramas in 
verse. Crebillon had a prodigious memory. He kept in mind 
the entire play, with all corrections and additions, and did 
not put it in writing until the time of the performance. 

Since the production of the first French opera in 1671, 
this genre of divertissement became very popular. Mazarin 
had introduced a troupe of singers into France from Italy, 
where opera was flourishing since the sixteenth century. 
Perrin and Cambert wrote the words and music of Pomone, 
the first French opera given in 1671. Then Lulli the Italian 
composer, receiving a privilege from Louis XIV, opened his 
theater in 1672, under the name of Academie Royale de 
Musique, for operatic productions, and engaged Quinault at 
four thousand livres to furnish annually a poem for the opera. 
Lulli, director and manager of this theater for fourteen years, 
wrote the music for the ballets which Louis XIV himself 
danced, and he also put to music Moliere's comedy ballets. 

Philippe Quinault (1635-1698), wrote twelve opera poems 
for Lulli, besides sixteen tragedies and comedies, distinguished 
by a charming and facile style. Quinault was called the 
" handsome Quirinus," and together with Saint-Evremond, 
known by his literary correspondence, was a frequenter of the 
ruelles of the salons. 

Charles Rollin (1661-1741), the Sieve divin, one of the 
precursors of reform in modern methods, was one of the most 
beautiful characters of his time, but a poor historian. He 
devoted himself entirely to the education of youth. His 
Traite des Etudes, is a work whose merit still stands. " No- 
where, " says Villemain, " has education in letters, the only 
complete education of the moral man, been rendered more 
useful and attractive." He published thirteen volumes of 
L'Histoire Ancienne. Montesquieu called Rollin " The Bee 
of France." 

Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715), one of the great 
French writers and philosophers of this century, continued 
the Cartesian method, but essayed to overcome the dualism 

268 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

of that philosophy. He wished to conciliate Christianism 
with Cartesianism by conforming his system to the dogma, and 
asserting that the human mind and the divine word are one. 
Arnaud contested his doctrines and Fenelon also undertook to 
refute them. 

Pseudo-classic literature began with Jean-Baptiste Rous- 
seau (1670-1741). He studied with the Jesuits, and " com- 
menced as an author " with his Odes Sacrees — imitated from 
the Bible, addressed to the converted old men of the seven- 
teenth century. At the same time he composed licentious epi- 
grams, destined for young libertines who were to be the prof- 
ligates of the regency. Of his " Ode to Posterity,'' Voltaire 
said to him: " Gare que cet ecrit in extremis n'aille pas a son 
adresse! " 1 J. B. Rousseau was the son of a mason of whom 
he was ashamed. On making his first dramatic success, he 
said to his father, who had come to congratulate him: " I 
do not know you! " To which his father answered: " Do 
not forget that it is the mason who made the poet! " 

Rousseau never succeeded in obtaining triumphs in drama, 
although he thought himself particularly called to that voca- 
tion; and the failure of his comedy of Le Flatteur, gave 
birth to infamous and celebrated couplets which brought on 
him a decree of banishment. He passed his last years in 
Brussels and in Germany. Piron, author of La Metromanie 
and of many songs and satires, composed his epitaph: 

Paris fut son berceau, 

Le Brabant fut sa tombe. 

Sa vie fut trop longue de moitie — 

Trente ans digne d'envie, 

Trente ans digne de pitie. 2 

J. B. Rousseau was especially remarkable as a writer of 
epigrams. After Racine, Voltaire and Piron, 'J. B. Rousseau 
and Lebrun excelled in this pungent form of literature in 
France. This is Rousseau's epigram against the Prince de 
Rohan, Cardinal of France : 

1 " Beware that this composition in extremis (at death's door) will not 
reach its address." ■ 

2 " Paris was his cradle, Brabant his grave. His life was too long by 
half — for thirty years to be envied, for thirty years to be pitied." 

269 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Un vieux Rohan, tout bouffi de son nom, 

Oppresse fut du foudre apoplectique. 

Un vieux docteur, horarae de grand renom, 

Appele fut dans ce moment critique. 

Pres du malade, il s'assied, prend le pouls: 

"Eh! bien, dit-il, comment vous sentez-vous? " 

Point ne repond. Notre ruse Boerhave ■ 

Lui crie alors d'un ton un peu plus fort: 

"Monseigneur! — Rien! Peste! Le cas est grave. 

Prince! — Au plus mal! — Votre Altesse! II est mort. 3 

Four comic authors came into prominence toward the 
end of the century: Regnard, Dufresny, Dancourt, and Le 
Sage. The comedies of Jean Francois Regnard (1655-1709), 
are considered the best after Moliere. Written with great 
vivacity and ease, his plays are characterized by their good 
humor and gayety, and in the facility of dialogue he is 
unsurpassed. Of his twenty-five plays, several are still fa- 
vorites on the French stage: Le Legataire Universel, Le 
Joueur, Le Distrait, Les Menechmes. In Regnard 's satires 
of contemporaneous vices, his only aim has been to provoke 
laughter. Voltaire said of him: li Qui ne se plait avec 
Regnard n 'est digne d 'admirer Moliere. " 3 A famous adven- 
ture which Regnard experienced he describes in his novel 
La Provengale: On a sea voyage from Italy to Marseilles, 
Regnard was taken prisoner by pirates together with a lady 
whom he loved, and her husband ; Regnard was sold to Ach- 
met-Talem, who made him his cook, and took him to Constanti- 
nople. Regnard 's family rescued him and he returned to 
France with the lady of his affections, and made preparations 
to marry her, when the husband, whom they believed dead, 

1 Famous Dutch doctor, used here as a class-name. 

2 Old Rohan, all puffed up with his name, was oppressed with an apoplec- 
tic stroke. So an old doctor, a man of great renown, was called in at this 
critical moment. v Seating himself, he felt the sick man's pulse. "Well," 
he said, " how are you? " There was no response. Our crafty Boerhave 
then called out in a little louder tone: "Monseigneur! ... No answer! 
The deuce! The case is grave. Prince! . . . Past recovery! . . . Your 
Highness! . . . He is dead!" 

3 " He who takes no pleasure with Regnard is unworthy of admiring 
Moliere." 

270 



LE SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV 

appeared. Regnard then sought distraction in travel, return- 
ing after several years to France, where he divided his time 
between Paris and his chateau de Grillon, in literary pursuits 
and pleasure. 

Charles Riviere-Dufresny (1648-1724), was successful as 
musician, artist, architect, poet, novelist, and dramatic author. 
The incident of his having married his laundress to liquidate 
his debts to her, furnished Le Sage with a character for his 
Biable boiteux. 

Florent Darton, Sieur D'Ancourt (1661-1725), called 
Dancourt, wrote about sixty comedies, some of which are still 
popular. He excelled in representing in a satirical manner 
the customs of his epoch, and especially the power of money 
and scramble for position. He was at first a lawyer, but hav- 
ing run away with and married a comedian's daughter, he 
adopted that profession to please her, and remained for thirty- 
three years at the Comedie-Francaise as one of its most favor- 
ite comedians. 

Alain Rene Le Sage (1668-1747), was a dramatic author 
and novelist, and was inspired from the start by Spanish 
literature. The title and plot of his first novel Le Biable 
Boiteux, are taken from the Spanish novel, El diablo cojuelo, 
by Guevara, but the episodes and characters, essentially 
French, are his own. The author tells how Asmodee, a 
malicious and tricky servant of the devil, is indebted to a 
young student, Don Cleophas, for liberating him from the 
captivity of a magician, and repays him by letting him see 
from a tower in Madrid the interior of all the houses, whose 
roofs are uncovered at a signal from the devil's servant. 
The novelist portrays with amusing humor and fine satire a 
series of scenes drawn from various walks of life. The suc- 
cess of the work was such that two purchasers had a dispute 
with weapons for the last copy that remained in a bookstore. 

The dramatic works of Le Sage are Crispin, rival de son 
maitre, and Turcaret. Crispin wishes to marry the fiancee 
of his master, in order to receive the dower and flee with it. 
This is only the knavery of valets, but the dialogue is worthy 
of Moliere in its spirit and naturalness. Turcaret has a 
more elevated purpose. People had just been organizing 
joint-stock societies, and an unbridled era of gambling had 

271 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

resulted. Many families had been ruined; but many people 
without intelligence or education, had found themselves sud- 
denly rich, and wished to mimic the debauched grands sei- 
gneurs. These unscrupulous financiers, so much in predom- 
inance at the time, are depicted with unsparing vigor. Tur- 
caret is one of these men; and this vulgar and insolent rev- 
enue farmer and his corrupt entourage are so true to life, 
that those who felt that they were hit by his comedy offered 
a fortune to Le Sage if he would suppress it. He did not 
consent to this, preferring to lead a life often painful and 
harassed. 

The immortal masterpiece of Le Sage is Gil Bias. The 
hero is a young man whom his parents send forth in search 
of employment, confiding to him a mule and very little money. 
Gil Bias successively mounts all the rungs of the social ladder. 
We see him despoiled by tavern keepers and parasites; now 
connected with thieves, now with doctors, lawyers, players, 
noble personages; with an archbishop, whose sermons he cor- 
rects — and, finally, as secretary of two celebrated ministers 
who in turn govern Spain. Thus the author brings before 
us a complete picture of society — interrupting himself, from 
time to time, to give us sentimental bits which do not equal 
his comic passages. The narrator, who is Gil Bias himself, 
is a good character — loving and thinking aright, but some- 
times doing evil, and exciting our sympathies, in spite of his 
errors. He is one of the best literary types of France. Gil 
Bias was also a loan from Spain, but the author in this case 
borrowed only the scene ; the fiber of the novel, the characters, 
so diverse and typical — especially the hero, the true ancestor 
of Figaro — all this is his own invention. Brunetiere says: 
" The originality of Le Sage's novel lies in the fact that he 
has ' humanized ' that which he imitated of the Spanish novel. 
To understand the meaning of this word, it suffices to compare 
Gil Bias with his translation of Estevanville Gonzales. Of 
the rogue's confession in the Spanish novel he made a pic- 
ture of humanity, and from a succession of indifferent adven- 
tures he evolved a satire of the conditions of his time. . . . 
The importance of Le Sage's novel lies in the fact of having 
constituted the realistic novel as a literary genre." 

Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was one of the most influential 

272 



LE SIEOLE DE LOUIS XIV 

philosopher-theologians and critics of Prance. He leaned 
toward skepticism, and was a precursor of the Encyclopedists 
of the eighteenth century. His Dictionnaire historique et 
critique is still considered a good book of reference for the cul- 
ture and literature of the seventeenth century. His Beponses 
a un provincial is a collection of philosophical and religious 
dissertations. Mennechet writes: " Attacked often with 
violence, Bayle defended himself always with moderation, 
and merited by his virtues and talent that France, who 
banished him, should consider it an honor to number him 
among her illustrious children." 

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757), born at 
Rouen, was a nephew of Corneille. His importance is almost 
entirely confined to the influence which he exercised on his 
circle, by the universality of his knowledge, and the charm 
of his conversation. He was also for many years the oracle 
of the salons. In his last years, he replied to a lady who 
asked his age: " Sh-h! Death has forgotten me." Fonte- 
nelle introduced science into the domain of literature, and 
had a remarkable talent for putting science within the reach 
of ordinary people; it is this which made the success of his 
Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes, a kind of astronomical 
treatise. For forty-three years he was secretary of the Acad- 
emy of Sciences — a post which exercised his talents agree- 
ably. In his Histoire de I'Academie, he touches everything 
with a light hand, and makes clear to the least cultivated 
minds the most perplexing scientific questions. It was he 
who first drew knowledge out of the great tomes in which it 
was concealed, and made it easy of access to ordinary persons. 
The Eloges des academiciens, which he was officially called on 
to pronounce, are perhaps the most interesting part of this 
work of Fontenelle, and one of his best claims on posterity. 
His other works include Histoire des Oracles, Histoire du 
Theatre Frangais, Vie de Pierre Corneille and Traite sur 
le Bonheur. In his Digression sur les modernes, he espoused 
the cause of the moderns in the Querelle des anciens et des 
modernes. 

Fontenelle was a pronounced skeptic of marvelous intel- 
ligence. His thought is tinctured with a kind of discretion 
compounded of prudence and good taste. He used to say: 
W 273 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

" If my hands were full of truths, I should take care not to 
open them," alluding to the persecution which has too often 
assailed the innovator. Fontenelle lived to be a centenarian. 
He therefore belonged to two centuries, ended the list of 
writers belonging to the seventeenth century, and with Bayle 
began the eighteenth century. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE EIGHTEENTH, OR PHILOSOPHIC, CENTURY 

With reference to the preceding period, the eighteenth 
century is at once a continuation, a development, and a reac- 
tion. It is a continuation, inasmuch, as in certain points it 
copies its predecessor, but with weakening modifications ; and 
this is true, especially of three forms of art — tragedy, com- 
edy, and preaching. The tragedy was that of the classic 
school badly imitated. Voltaire alone gave a certain eclat to 
this genre, and his tragedy shows clearly the traces of devel- 
opment, though he made of it an instrument to propagate 
his ideas. But with respect to comedy and, particularly, 
preaching, we find only impairment of quality. Comedy 
flourished, it is true, but it was an imitation of Moliere, whose 
principal followers were Regnard, Dufresny, Destouehes, Dan- 
court, Piron, and Gresset. The oraison funebre was stilled, 
and the eloquence of the pulpit ended with Massillon. 

The eighteenth century is a development, because toward 
its close, worn out with analysis, it saw the efflorescence of the 
poetry of nature. But especially is this period a reaction; 
that indeed is its dominant character. Thus it is that, among 
peoples of great intellectual development, " centuries suc- 
ceed one another, and the human mind accomplishes its des- 
tiny.' ' " Nothing is more different, and, nevertheless, noth- 
ing is more closely connected than these two epochs,' ' M. 
Villemain has said. 

Indeed, there is connection, or continuity, between action 
and its consequence — reaction. All reaction is vindictive 
and partial, resembling reprisals. That of the eighteenth 
century is excessive. Three authorities were denied and al- 
most overturned: the ancients, the religious, and social insti- 
tutions. All the problems of life were solved, everything 

275 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

was interpreted and illumined, without the preliminary labor 
of study. Goethe's Gottes unbegreiflich hohen Werken found 
no echo in the France of the eighteenth century. Finally, 
in politics, there was pronounced reaction against authorities 
and institutions — a reaction, doubtless, purely theoretical, 
a reaction solely in writing. " Absolute monarchy," says 
a French critic, " seemed to exist still intact, social powers 
still seemed to hold themselves upright; only two things were 
lacking — glory and faith in existing institutions. 1 " Glory 
gone, the institutions that inspired it must necessarily be 
questioned. But this was not always done in a subversive 
spirit ; the attacks, moreover, arose from a scientific and con- 
servative point of view. Thus Montesquieu wrote his book 
on " The Spirit of Laws," intent on conservation and con- 
solidation. (He wished to preserve while ameliorating, and in 
ameliorating to consolidate.) Things were not attacked from 
the front, but everything was attacked in turn — which could 
not have happened in the preceding century. Some there were 
who wanted nothing but the " legitimate religion of God." 
But Catholicism had become incrusted in the body of society, 
like the portrait of Phidias which could not be detached from 
the statue of Jupiter without breaking it into pieces. The 
throne rested en the altar ; the king was king only when he was 
consecrated, the anointed of the Lord. The glory of dis- 
playing intelligence prevailed over all else — if anything 
characterized the French spirit, it was precisely this. ' ' Intel- 
ligence is a dignity in the world," said Madame de La Fa- 
yette. " In France it is so much the more necessary as one 
occupies a more prominent position; the man who has this 
esprit alone, will win out over him who possesses only rank 
and fortune." In the eighteenth century, in fact, the major- 
ity of men of quality loved their intellect and character better 
than their rank. With some it went even further : they were 
possessed with a sincere desire to see clearly, in order to cor- 
rect abuses — with the love of what they were beginning 

1 There are dead things which seem to live: the absolute monarchy 
could no longer agree with the higher and more liberal new thought, which 
was especially democratic. The nobility, the clergy, and the people, had 
not a single right. The Third Estate was nothing. " What do you wish 
to be? " was asked. "Everything," was the answer. 

276 



THE EIGHTEENTH, OR PHILOSOPHIC, CENTURY 

to call " the public welfare. " Literature precipitated all 
these elements in the same direction, or at least it hastened 
their course. For literature is never the expression of con- 
ventional society. It represents moral and intellectual society 
— the state of customs and minds. Antiquity, religion, so- 
cial institutions — these, then, were the three things on which 
hinged the reaction of the eighteenth century." 

The eighteenth century has been entitled ' ' the philosophic 
century." The writers of the seventeenth century were psy- 
chologists, those of the eighteenth were philosophers preoccu- 
pied with social life, its laws and institutions. Its master- 
pieces were no longer tragedies and funeral orations, but 
studies of legislation and treatises on education. Poetry held 
a secondary place, and prose which had become precise and 
rigorous was the instrument of propaganda. Eloquence no 
longer confined to the pulpit was spread and distributed, not 
so much orally as in the pamphlet. Philosophy, having broken 
from tradition and prejudice, became analytic and sensual. 
There is nothing more typically French than the literature 
of the seventeenth century; that of the eighteenth was no 
longer exclusively French, for French thought became less 
profound and less concentrated. France decentralized itself 
and received new ideas, first from England, then from Ger- 
many. Voltaire was the first to reveal English genius and 
culture, just as later Madame de Stael revealed the German. 

English comedies of a moralizing tenor were being written 
by Cibber, Steel, Susanna Centlivre ; and during Queen Anne 's 
reign there began to appear those weekly publications whose 
influence was felt throughout England and the Continent. 
In 1709, appeared the Tatler, and in 1711, the Spectator. 1 
Through all these mediums English thought and life became 
known to the French, when men such as J. J. Rousseau, Vol- 
taire, Maupertuis, Montesquieu, Prevost, Destouches, went 
to live in England. Such writers as Marivaux, Piron, Louis 
Racine (who translated Milton), d'Argenson, de la Chaussee, 
Du Boccage, and Letourneur were occupied with English 

1 The Spectator comprised 555 numbers, of which many were written 
by Addison and Steele. Addison wrote the "Sir Roger de Coverley" 
papers, and "killed that gentleman in No. 517, so that nobody else might 
murder him." 

277 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

literature by translating or imitating it. In this manner 
arose a healthful middle class and moral element was injected 
into the literature of France, forming a counter current to the 
corruption of the times, and tending to improvement and 
reform. The writers of the seventeenth century were grouped 
around the king and confined to his dictum. In the eighteenth 
century, the court was no longer the center of attention and 
ambition, but the approbation of the public was sought after. 
The society of men of letters was greatly developed, and the 
number of second-rate writers was especially multiplied. 

Women played a peculiar role in this society of letters. 
During the reign of Louis XIV, Madame de Sevigne, Madame 
de La Fayette, and other brilliant women saw disappear 
before them the precedence which had been accorded them 
as leaders of the literary world, during the reign of the 
Precieuses of the Hotel de Rambouillet. They were no longer 
at the head of the society of letters; but in the eighteenth 
century this role was again possible, and the salons of the 
ladies became the great centers for the writers of the time. 
The theological and literary quarrels under Louis XIV 
were succeeded by social and philosophical questions. Litera- 
ture became an instrument of propaganda and philosophical 
theories. The eighteenth century was, above all, an epoch 
of combat; the creative talents were succeeded by the de- 
structive talents, which were wittier than powerful ; rhetoric 
replaced eloquence, wit took the place of genius. The writer 
could rise to power and fame without the favor of the 
court (a thing impossible in the seventeenth century), and 
even in open defiance of it; yet at the same time we see the 
persecution of independent writers by the men in power, 
who, on the least pretext, sent the offenders to the Bastille. 
The unexampled subjugation of thought and art during the 
reign of Louis XIV, necessarily produced a reaction; with 
his death, there first of all disappeared the reverence for 
royalty; this accomplished, the political chanson, which had 
begun to appear during the last ten years of his reign, 
achieved a vogue it had not known for a hundred years. 
The mocking songs of the Chansonnier historique, collected 
by Clairambault and Maurepas, are the precursors of the 
serious political literature of the ensuing decade. 

278 



THE EIGHTEENTH, OR PHILOSOPHIC, CENTURY 

In spite of the immoral life of Louis XIV, lie always pre- 
served a semblance of the proprieties, whereas the Regent 
and Louis XV flaunted their vices shamelessly, thus encour- 
aging emulation. From all this we perceive that we must 
keep in mind the depravity of the court, and consequently 
that of society, as well as the influence of English philosophy, 
in order to understand the bulk of French literature in the 
eighteenth century. 

Louis XV, the Well-Beloved — third son of Louis, Duke 
of Burgundy, and great-grandson of Louis XIV — first reigned 
under the regency of the Duke of Orleans. The regency was 
signalized by the bankruptcy of Law, 1 and the war against 
Spain. Louis XV married Marie Leczinska, but he let him- 
self be influenced by his favorites. The Duchesse de Cha- 
teauroux and her three sisters of the Nesle-Mailly family were 
successively his mistresses. 2 From 1745 to 1764, Jeanne 
Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, exercised an un- 
fortunate influence on the king, as also on the government, 
and contributed to the entanglement of France in the Seven 
Years' War. She cost France 40,000,000 livres by her 
prodigalities, which are not excused by the protection she 
skillfully accorded to the artists and writers of her time. 



1 John Law, born in Edinburgh, a famous financier, controller general 
of French finances under the regency. He founded the Banque generate 
and formed the Mississippi scheme (Mississippi Bubble), controlling the 
French territory in America, then called Louisiana, to pay off the national 
debt of France. This company he united with the East India and China 
Companies later known as the Compagnie des Indes. Law's schemes re- 
sulted in a great financial panic in 1720. 

2 In 1232 Eustache de St. Pol, wife of a lord of Bruges, presented the 
tower of Nesle to Saint Louis (Louis IX), who ceded it to his mother, Blanche 
of Castille. The pious queen could not perceive its destiny. Philippe the 
Long bought it in 1308 from Amaury de Nesle for 5,000 livres. The State 
built the tower, situated on the left bank of the Seine, in order to defend 
the river, the property at that time belonging to the family of Nesle. 
Some time after, Philip sent thither his wife, Jeanne de Bourgogne, to 
punish her for certain misdeeds. The tower furnished Alexandre Dumas 
the title for a celebrated drama, La Tour de Nesle, in which Marguerite de 
Bourgogne, wife of Louis le Hutin, infamous for her crimes, plays the 
principal role. The mausoleum of Mazarin was erected on the site three 
centuries later. 

279 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Jeanne Becu, Conitesse du Barry, was the king's favorite after 
1768, and her extravagance was also fatal to the people 

Le Livre Rouge (the Red Book) — three large volumes 
containing a secret register of the private expenses of Louis 
XV and XVI, and still extant in the National Library at 
Paris — mentions the expenditure of 228,000,000 livres from 
May 19, 1774 to August 16, 1789. The memoranda of cash 
disbursements show that 860,000,000 livres were expended, for 
pensions and otherwise, without legal authority or warrant. 
But, more extraordinary still, is the disclosure that Madame du 
Barry enjoyed credit in the Red Book, by favor of her royal 
lover, not only for herself, but for her kinsmen and proteges. 
In the first place, she is listed personally for 500,000 francs, 
paid by order of Louis XVI. She enjoyed, besides, an allow- 
ance of 300,000 francs quarterly. Then appears a pension 
of 80,000 francs for her husband; another of 150,000 livres 
for her brother-in-law, and a sum of about 1,000,000 ecus for 
her friend the Duchess of Polignac's family. After the 
publication of the Red Book — so called because the entries 
were made in red ink — Mirabeau exclaimed : 1,000 ecus to the 
family of d'Assas, 1 for saving the State, 1,000,000 to the fam- 
ily of Polignac for having sent it to perdition! " 

So the favorites reigned, while Louis XV struck at the 
Jesuits and the Parlements — the two most solid supports of 
the monarchy. But by the side of all this corruption that 
spread to the very steps of the throne, the philosophers of 
the eighteenth century, through their writings, brought about 
a reaction against the abuses of the time: Voltaire, Montes- 
quieu, Rousseau, the Encyclopedists, and the Physiocrates 
(economists) created a powerful current of opinion, while 
Franklin, Galvani, Lavoisier, Linne, Buffon, Jussien, directed 
the sciences into new paths. 

1 Tradition has it that the Chevalier d'Assas' famous cry: "A moi! 
Auvergne! (the name of the regiment in which he was captain) voila 
les ennemis!" saved France from the enemy in October, 1760, while it 
caused his death. 



280 



THE EIGHTEENTH, OR PHILOSOPHIC, CENTURY 

THE SALONS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

During the last ten years of the reign of Louis XIV, 
when he withdrew from pleasure to lead a life of piety, and 
thus lost touch with the intellectual movement, society re- 
trieved itself. From the debris of the court the salons were 
formed; and in the eighteenth century these became a power 
through which writers exercised their influence upon society. 
The Cour de Sceaux expressed the need of amusement that 
was felt during the last ten years of the king's life; the 
Duchesse du Maine, granddaughter of the great Conde, made 
of her chateau de Sceaux a sort of Versailles in miniature. 
While the king's reign closed sadly amid public misfortunes 
and private sorrows, at the court of Sceaux there was only 
laughter and amusement. The duchess was witty and 
learned ; she played comedy, bethought herself of some amuse- 
ment every hour, and turned night into day. She instituted 
an order of knighthood called Mouche a miel, and presided at 
feasts belonging to a series under the name of the Grandes 
nuits de Sceaux. Mademoiselle de Launay, one of her ladies 
in waiting, who suffered much from her caprices, wrote the 
Memoires of those times in a very entertaining manner. 

The great salons of the eighteenth century were those 
where literature, science, philosophy, religion, and politics 
were the subjects of discussion and conversation. " There 
could be no more interesting history than that of the cele- 
brated women of the eighteenth century," said Goethe. The 
first salon in order of time is that of Anna Theresa, Marquise 
de Lambert — author of works on education. She says : ' ' We 
teach women to please, whereas we should teach them to 
think ' ' ; and she contended that men in general abuse their 
strength. The Marquise in a measure took up the work of 
Madame de Rambouillet in aiming to improve morals and man- 
ners. For forty years she held receptions in her apartment 
of the Palais Mazarin. The Marquis de Valincourt, The Pre- 
sident Henault, The Comte de Saint-Aulaire, The Abbe de 
Choisy, The Marquis d'Argenson, Antoine Houdar de La 
Motte, the oracle of her salon, Montesquieu, Marivaux, Ter- 
rasson, Fontenelle, and many other notables frequented her 
salon. As at the Hotel de Rambouillet men of letters, actors, 

281 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

and actresses intermingled with the aristocrats. This the fa- 
mous actress Adrienne Lecouvreur mentions in her letters 
published in 1892. 

The second salon to be established was presided over by 
the Marquise de Tencin, sister of the Cardinal de Tencin, 
Archbishop of Lyons, and mother of d'Alembert. She used 
to say : ' ' Man should gain friends among women ; for through 
women one can do whatever one wishes with man. ' ' 

The salon of Marie Therese Rodet Geoffrin was conducted 
with great ability. Through her liberalities she gathered 
about her a little world which considered her as its Providence. 
Distinguished foreigners admitted to its circles testified to 
the sentiments of gratitude and affection which she inspired; 
but her indulgence never degenerated into weakness. Lord 
Walpole called Madame Geoffrin "Common Sense." Stanis- 
laus Poniatowski held her in great esteem, and when he became 
King of Poland, he entertained her royally at his court. She 
supported the Encyclopedists, but in spite of her intimate 
relations with the philosophers, she was very devout. The 
habitues of her salon included but one woman — Mademoiselle 
de Lespinasse, for whom d 'Alembert felt something more than 
friendship, despite her lack of beauty. Mademoiselle de Les- 
pinasse herself opened a salon after her breaking off with 
Madame du Deffand with whom she lived for ten years at the 
convent of St. Joseph at Paris. Marmontel has characterized 
her thus : ' ' An astonishing compound of propriety, of reason, 
of wisdom with the most lively mind, the most ardent soul, 
the most inflammable imagination. ' ' 

Marie de Vichy Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, was 
one of the most celebrated women of the eighteenth century. 
After a turbulent life in Paris and at the court of Sceaux, 
Madame du Deffand retired to the convent of St. Joseph, but 
taking with her the great society of the epoch, the scholars, 
writers, grand lords and ladies. La Harpe said of her: " It 
would be difficult for one to have less sensibility and more ego- 
tism. ' ' She herself said : ' ' I have never been able to love any- 
thing. ' ' To one of her best male friends she remarked : ' ' There 
has never been a cloud in our relations with each other. ' ' Which 
prompted her friend to explain: " That is doubtless because 
we do not love each other." This friend died, and Madame du 

282 



THE EIGHTEENTH, OR PHILOSOPHIC, CENTURY 

Deffand went to dine in company with her associates. " He 
died this evening at six o'clock," she said, " otherwise you 
would not see me here." Then she ate a very hearty dinner, 
for she was something of a gourmande. Indeed, Voltaire 
often cautioned her, " Do not eat too much." To him she 
confessed: " I fear two things — bodily pain and mental en- 
nui." It was Madame du Deffand who, alluding to the epi- 
grammatic form of certain chapters of the ' ' Spirit of Laws ' ' 
(L' Esprit des Lois) of Montesquieu, said that it was " de 
1 'esprit sur les lois. ' ' 1 Her correspondence with the greatest 
minds of her time — Voltaire, Horace Walpole, Henault, and 
Montesquieu — is full of interest, and bears witness to the 
soundness of her judgment. 

Louise Florence d'Epinay married at the age of nineteen 
de La Live de Bellegarde, a gambler and a debauchee who, 
according to Diderot, ran through two millions without say- 
ing a good word or doing a good deed. Forsaken by him, 
she found consolation among the literary reunions of her salon 
frequented by Duclos, d'Holbach, Grimm who wrote of her 
in his famous Correspondance, J. J. Rousseau whose bene- 
factress she was and for whom she built the " Ermitage " in 
her park of La Chevrette. Voltaire called her an eagle in a 
cage of gauze. She published some interesting Memoires. 

Mademoiselle Guinault's salon was enlivened by her talent 
as a skillful conversationalist, but her tone was very free, and 
her philosophy savored of atheism. This afforded an op- 
portunity for a sally by J. J. Rousseau. He arose to take 
leave, saying: " If it is cowardly to speak ill of an absent 
friend, it is a crime to permit anyone to say anything evil of 
one's God, who is present." Madame de Simiane, grand- 
daughter of Madame de Sevigne, has left us some charming 
letters descriptive of high society in those days. 

Paul Henri Dietrich, Baron d'Holbach (a German), and 
Claude Arien Helvetius, both entertained that society in 
which the tone of materialism dominated. Both were of the 
Maecenas type, and were patrons of men of letters. D'Hol- 
bach, a philanthropist, was honored by J. J. Rousseau, who 
transferred him, as Wolmar, to the pages of Julie, on la 

1 Witticisms concerning laws. 
283 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Nouvelle Helo'ise. D'Holbach was a collaborator of the 
E ncyclopedie, and wrote a book, Le Systeme de la Nature ou 
des Lois du monde physique et du monde moral, directed 
chiefly against the idea of God. He was the father of all 
the philosophy and of all the antireligious polemics of the 
eighteenth century. D'Holbach gave two dinners a week, 
and, because of the good cheer always in evidence in his house, 
he received from the Abbe Galiani the cognomen of " First 
Steward of Philosophy." 

Claude Adrien Helvetius wrote a book entitled De V esprit, 
which was a manual of materialistic philosophy, and, accord- 
ing to Madame du Deffand, ' ' told the secret of the world. ' ' In 
this book man is reduced to the level of the brute, so that even 
Voltaire was terrified, and disavowed these doctrines. Julien 
de La Mettrie, 1 a physician, surpassed the materialistic teach- 
ings of d'Holbach and Helvetius, in his works L 'Homme 
machine and L' Homme plante. Frederick the Great called 
him to the Royal Academy at Berlin. He was very rich and 
very charitable, paying pensions to many poor literary men — 
in particular to Marivaux. Being reproached for frequently 
assisting unworthy persons, he replied: " If I were king, I 
would correct them. As I am only rich, I must assist them. ' ' 

Madame Helvetius, a beautiful, witty, and very charitable 
woman, continued her salon at her house in Auteuil after her 
husband's death. The great celebrities of the day, among 
them Benjamin Franklin during his stay in Paris, frequented 
this salon which became the first Society of Auteuil. 

The last salon of this century was that of Madame Necker, 
a Swiss lady, the mother of Madame de Stael, and at one time 
engaged to marry the famous English historian, Gibbon. The 
frequenters of this salon included Marmontel, Diderot, Buffon, 
and La Harpe. Madame Necker was very charitable; she 
.founded the Hopital Necker, which she administered during 
ten years. 

Finally, in this brief catalogue of the brilliant women of 
the salons, was Madame Roland — Jeanne Manon Phlipon Ro- 
land de la Platiere, daughter of an engraver — a woman of high 

1 Adolph Menzel put La Mettrie in his celebrated painting of Fred- 
erick's round table — on which were served the famous suppers of " Sans- 
Souci." 

284 



THE EIGHTEENTH, OR PHILOSOPHIC, CENTURY 

intelligence and great goodness, with a passion for literature 
and arts. The reading of Rousseau's works greatly influenced 
her imagination. A republican and stoic, the political in- 
fluence of her celebrated salon was considerable. There the 
Girondins were most frequently seen; she was almost the 
muse of the party. When her husband, M. Roland de la 
Platiere, an estimable economist, was called to the Legislative 
Assembly, and then to the Ministry of the Interior with the 
Girondin party, Madame Roland became his secretary, or, 
rather, his inspiration. The majority of the reports and circu- 
lars which he signed were written by her — among others, a very 
vivacious letter addressed to Louis XVI, which caused a great 
stir and brought about the fall of the ministry. It was at her 
home also that the Girondins met to draw up their resolutions. 
When the party was proscribed on May 31, 1793, Roland suc- 
ceeded in escaping, but his wife was arrested. It was during 
the enforced leisure of prison life that she began to trace in 
her Memoires the story of her childhood and her youth, with 
as much serenity as if she were not on the eve of death upon 
the scaffold. When she perceived that she would not have 
time to recount everything with minute detail, she contented 
herself with drawing the portraits of the principal politicians 
whom she had known, and with depicting the revolutionary 
scenes in which she had been thrown. It was all written in a 
firm style, without hesitation or weakness. The letters to 
Buzot, also written in prison, are of an admirable lyric elo- 
quence. She went to the scaffold all undaunted, saying only 
these few words of farewell which posterity has cherished: 
" Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name! " 
Her husband, who was at Rouen, killed himself on hearing of 
his wife's death. Madame Roland remains one of the dis- 
tinguished personalities and intellects of the eighteenth 
century. 



CHAPTER XIX 

VOLTAIRE 

The most brilliant, influential, and infinitely versatile of 
all the French writers was Voltaire, whose real name was 
Francois-Marie Arouet, born at Paris in 1694. He was the 
very personification of the French mind and although not a 
professed philosopher, he acted more powerfully on the trend 
of thought of his epoch than any of the philosophers. Vol- 
taire studied with the Jesuits at the Louis le Grand College; 
his professors predicted that he would some day be the high- 
est authority of theism. He frequented at an early age the 
society that was the most brilliant, as it was also the most 
licentious in Paris— the society of the Due de Sully, the 
Prince de Conti, the Due de Vendome, the Marquis de la 
Fare, the Abbe de Chaulieu. He was introduced to it by the 
Abbe de Chateauneuf, his godfather, and the friend of Ninon 
de L'Enclos. The Abbe had presented him to her when Vol- 
taire was only a child of thirteen, and Ninon was eighty-five 
years old; at her death she left the boy two thousand francs 
with which to buy books. 

Anne — called Ninon — de L'Enclos was born at Paris of 
noble parents. Her mother wished to make her a nun; her 
father, a man of intelligence and given to pleasure, succeeded 
in making her an Epicurean. Ninon lost her parents at the 
age of fifteen years, and practically educated herself. She 
was celebrated for her intelligence, her wit, her philosophy, 
her music, her dancing, and singing. Flighty in love, constant 
in friendship, scrupulously honest in her worldly relations, 
of an even temperament, charming deportment, faithful in 
character, suited both to lead young people and to fascinate 
them, intellectual without being precieuse, and — besides all 
this — very beautiful, she ' ' thought in the manner of Socrates 
and acted like Lais." Her reputation for inconstancy and 

286 



VOLTAIRE 

gallantry did not prevent her from having illustrious friends. 
The Coligni, the Villarceaux, the Sevigne families, the great 
Conde, and many others — all admired her. Moreover, she 
was sought after by the most lovable and respectable women 
of her time. Madame de Maintenon wanted her to become 
a nun, and repair to Versailles in order to console her for 
the tedium of its grandeur and her old age; but Ninon 
preferred her voluptuous obscurity to brilliant slavery. Her 
home was the rendezvous of the most polished circle of the 
court and city, and the most illustrious personages of the re- 
public of letters. Scarron consulted her about his novels, 
Saint-Evremond on his verses, Moliere on his comedies, Fon- 
tenelle on his Dialogues. At the age of eighty years she had 
not lost the art of inspiring love, and she died at ninety. 
She left two children, one of whom died a naval officer. The 
other son, not knowing that she was his mother, fell in love 
with her; but when he discovered the secret of his birth, he 
stabbed himself in despair. 

Voltaire, in a letter about Ninon de L 'Enclos, wrote : 

I shall first tell you, as an accurate historiographer, that the Car- 
dinal de Richelieu was her first admirer. A quarrel between two of 
her lovers was the cause of a suggestion to the queen that she be sent 
to a convent. Ninon answered that she was perfectly willing pro- 
vided it was a convent of Franciscan friars. When told that her 
place would be at the Filles Repenties (Home for Repentant Girls), she 
protested that she was neither file (maiden) nor repentant. Ninon 
had too many friends and her company was too agreeable for such 
punitive measures to prevail, and finally the queen let her live as 
she wished. Huyghens, the Dutch philosopher, who discovered the 
first satellite of Saturn while in France, was among those in love 
with her. She soon developed a philosophical turn of mind, and they 
gave her the name of the modern Leontium. Her philosophy was 
veritable, firm, invariable; and above prejudice and frivolous research. 
Saint-fivremond wrote beneath her picture the best known of all his 
verses: 

L'indulgente et sage nature 

A forme Tame de Ninon 
De la volupte d'fipicure 

Et de la vertu de Caton. 1 

1 Indulgent and wise nature has formed Ninon's soul with the voluptu- 
ousness of Epicurus and the virtue of Cato. 

287 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The grace of her intellect and the soundness of her sentiment lent 
her such a reputation that when Queen Christina came to France, in 
1654, she paid her the honor of going to see her in a little country- 
house where Ninon lived at the time. Ninon's home was indeed a 
kind of little Hotel de Rambouillet, only the people of her circle 
spoke more naturally and were more interested in philosophy. Mothers 
took pains to intrust her with the tuition of young people who wished 
to enter society with approval; and it was her pleasure to educate 
them. When Ninon was told that Remond, the introducer of am- 
bassadors, boasted everywhere of having been trained by her, she 
answered that, "like the Creator, she repented having made the man," 
and added : 

De Monsieur Remond voici le portrait; 

II a tout-a-fait l'air d'un hareng soret; 

II rime, il cabale; 

Est homme de cour, 

Se croit un Candale, 1 

Se dit un Saucour. 2 

II passe en Science 

Socrate et Platon; 

Ce pendant il danse 

Tout comme Ballon. 3 

De Monsieur Remond voici le portrait ; 

II a tout-a-fait l'air d'un hareng soret. ' 

Voltaire concludes his letter thus: " Say with me a little 
De Profundis for her." 

Voltaire wrote verses early in life. His father, treasurer 
of the Chamber of Accounts, had destined him for the magis- 
tracy, and, horrified at seeing him occupied with tragedy, sent 
him to the Marquis of Chateauneuf, French ambassador to 

1 The Due de Candale, son of the Due d'Epernon, the handsomest man 
of his time. 

2 The Marquis de Saucour passed for the most rigorous man of his day, 
and his fame became proverbial. 

3 A noted dancer. 

4 This is the portrait of Monsieur Remond: he has quite the air of a 
smoked herring. He rhymes, he plots; a courtier, he thinks himself a 
Candale, he calls himself a Saucour. He surpasses Socrates and Plato in 
science; meanwhile he dances like Ballon. This is the portrait of Monsieur 
Remond; he has quite the air of a smoked herring. 

288 



VOLTAIRE 

Holland, intending that he should enter a solicitor's office on 
his return home. Voltaire did not stay long, but he soon knew 
more serious and more salutary disgrace; he was falsely ac- 
cused of being the author of a satire against Louis XIV, which 
ended with this verse: 

J'ai vu ces maux, et je n'ai pas vingt ans. ' 

Voltaire was then almost twenty ; this seemed to the police 
sufficient proof of his guilt, and he was shut up in the Bastille. 
The regent, the Due d'Orleans, aware of his innocence, set 
him free and gave him a gratuity. It was upon his release 
from the Bastile that his tragedy, (Edipe, was played in 
1718. According to some authorities, he then took the name 
of Voltaire from a little family estate belonging to his mother, 
Marie Catherine Daumard, a noblewoman from Poitou; he 
took it in conformity with the usage then general among the 
bourgeoisie. 2 Voltaire was sent a second time to the Bastille 
—a victim not only of the arbitrary will of the government, 
but of the cowardice of a great lord. The Chevalier de Rohan- 
Chabot, while dining one day at the home of the Due de Sully, 
and being displeased that Voltaire was not of his opinion, 
said: " Who is that little gentleman who talks so loud? " 
' ' ' He is a man, ' ' answered Voltaire, ' ' who does not bear a 
great name, but who honors the one he does bear." The 
Chevalier de Rohan, greatly irritated, left the table. A few 
days afterwards, Voltaire, being again at dinner with the Due 
de Sully, was waylaid by the Chevalier's men who struck him 
over the shoulders repeatedly with a stick. Voltaire took 
fencing lessons, and then insulted the Chevalier, who accepted 
the challenge and fixed the rendezvous ; but instead of appear- 
ing there, he had Voltaire arrested, and confined in the 
Bastille. Voltaire stayed there only two weeks; but he was 
given his freedom only on condition that he should go to 
England where he remained three years until 1729. England 
gave him a warm welcome. The guest of Lord Bolingbroke, 3 

1 1 have seen these ills, and I am not twenty. 

2 Other authorities say that he derived " Voltaire " from an anagram 
(Arouet 1 (e) (j) eune), after his release from the Bastille. 

3 Voltaire had known him in France, at the time of Bolingbroke's brief 
service in the cause of the Pretender. 

20 289 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

of Lord Peterborough, and of the rich merchant Falkener, 
he made friends with Clarke, Gay, Pope, Swift, Congreve, and 
Johnson. He came to know English literature and English 
conditions; to perceive the high esteem in which writers were 
held; to appreciate the value of religious freedom, of justice, 
and of the courts. It was in England that he developed and 
enriched his literary genius. He read ' ' Paradise Lost ' ' ; he 
was inspired by the dramatic masterpieces of Shakespeare; 
he studied the philosophy of Bacon and of Locke, and ac- 
quainted himself with the scientific discoveries of Newton ; he 
witnessed the spectacle of liberty developing in every direction 
— not only in books, but in the theater and the pulpit, in the 
newspapers and in the courts of law. This sojourn in England 
was of vital importance in the life of Voltaire. English litera- 
ture during the time of the Stuarts was confined to an imita- 
tion of the French; but from 1688, under the influence of 
Locke, there was a change, and it is to England that we must 
look for the origin of the French philosophical impulse of the 
eighteenth century. From England Montesquieu brought his 
politics, Condillac his philosophy of sensualism, Voltaire his 
philosophical ideas and his innovations for the theater. Vol- 
taire's enthusiasm for these scientific and literary marvels, 
and his admiration for this country of tolerance and liberty, 
exercised a lasting influence. ' ' There is almost no work of 
Voltaire," says M. Villemain, " in which the mark of these 
three years in London cannot be found." It was there that 
Voltaire published a new edition of La Ligue, under the new 
title of La Henriade—a, poem " which breathes throughout 
his tolerance and his love of humanity, his hatred of war and 
fanaticism. ' ' * 

On returning to France, Voltaire found again the same 
arbitrary government and the persecutions inspired by re- 
ligious intolerance. The tragedy of La Mort de Cesar could 
not be printed because the author voiced republican senti- 
ments in the work ; and his elegy on the death of Mademoiselle 

1 The subject of La Henriade, to quote Voltaire himself, is " the siege of 
Paris, begun by Henri de Valois and Henri le Grand, and completed by the- 
latter alone. The scene is laid no farther than from Paris to Ivry, where 
was fought the famous battle which decided the fate of France and the 
royal house." 

290 



VOLTAIRE 

Lecouvreur, the celebrated actress, in which he opposed the 
prejudice that deprived actors of Christian burial, drew upon 
him a persecution that forced him to leave the capital and 
seek refuge at Rouen. This elegy reads : 

Ah! verrai-je tou jours ma faible nation, 
Incertaine en ses voeux, fletrir ce qu'elle admire; 
Nos moeurs avec nos lois tou jours se contredire, 
Et le Frangais volage endormi sous Tempire 
V De la superstition? 

Quoi! n'est-ce done qu'en Angleterre 
Que les mortels osent penser? 1 

At Rouen Voltaire secretly published his Histoire de 
Charles XII, and his Lettres Philosophiques sur les Anglais, 
wherein he undertook to make France understand England — 
its religion, sects, government ; its philosophy as expounded by 
Shakespeare, Pope, Swift, and the rest. The Lettres Philoso- 
phiques were suppressed by a i decree of the Council. The 
" Parliament " ordered the book to be burned by the hang- 
man and the keeper of the seals proscribed the author, who, 
warned in time, went into exile once more until he obtained 
permission to return to Paris. He withdrew into Lorraine, 
to the chateau of Cirey, with his friend the Marquise du 
Chalet (1735). The Marquise was of a serious mind, and 
of great charm and intelligence; during the fifteen years of 
her influence she inspired him to his best works: Alzire, 
Mahomet, Merope, Semiramis, V 'Enfant prodigue, Babouc, 
Micromegas, and Zadig. It was in this retirement that he 
composed the Elements de la Philosophie de Newton. This 
work, in the course of a few years, dethroned the official 
philosophers of France and Germany, Descartes and Leibnitz. 
The publication of the EpUre a Madame du Chdtelet on the 
philosophy of Newton raised a new storm. There is some dif- 
ficulty in explaining this when we read these verses : 

1 Ah! shall I always see my weak nation, uncertain in her wishes, con- 
demn what she admires; our customs always at odds with our laws, and 
the volatile French asleep under the empire of superstition? What! Is 
it, then, but in England that mortals dare think? 

291 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Dieu parle et le chaos se dissipe a sa voix : 

Vers un centre commun tout gravit a la fois; 

Ce ressort si puissant, Tame de la nature, 

Etait enseveli dans une nuit obscure ; 

Le compas de Newton, mesurant l'univers, 

Leve enfin ce grand voile, et les cieux sont ouverts; 

II deploie a mes yeux, par une main savante, 

De l'astre des saisons la robe etincelante : 

L'emeraude, l'azur, le pourpre, le rubis, 

Sont rimmortel tissu dont brillent ses habits. 

Chacun de ses rayons dans sa substance pure, 

Porte en soi les couleurs dont se peint la nature ; 

Et, confondus ensemble, ils eclairent nos yeux ; 

lis animent le monde, ils emplissent les cieux ; 

Confidents du Tres-Haut, substances eternelles, 

Qui brulez de ses feux, qui couvrez de vos ailes 

Le trone ou votre maitre est assis parmi vous, 

Parlez: du grand Newton n'etiez vous point jaloux? ' 

In Candide, ou Voptimisme, his most important philosoph- 
ical novel, Voltaire made sport of the famous maxim of the 
optimist Leibnitz: " Everything is for the best in the best 
of possible worlds." The tragedy Mahomet was staged at 
Lille; but Cardinal de Fleury opposed its representation at 
Paris. Voltaire dedicated his play to Pope Benedict XIV, 
who received it favorably and sent his blessing to the poet. 
In this same retirement, Voltaire finished his Discours sur 
V Homme, which is considered one of the most beautiful mon- 
uments of French poetry. He composed also the Histoire 
de Charles XII which to this day is very popular. It reads 

1 God speaks and chaos dissolves at His voice: all gravitates at once 
toward a common center. This powerful spring, the soul of Nature, was 
engulfed in night obscure. The compass of Newton, measuring the uni- 
verse, at last raises this great curtain, and the heavens are opened; there 
spreads before my eyes, by a wise hand, the sparkling robe of the orb of 
the seasons; emerald, azure, purple, ruby, are the immortal tissue of its 
brilliant garments. Each ray in its pure substance carries the colors with 
which Nature paints herself; mingled together they give light to our eyes, 
they animate the world, they fill the heavens. Confidants of the Most 
High, eternal substances, that burn with His fires, that cover with your 
wings the throne upon which your master is seated among you, speak: 
Were you not jealous of the great Newton? 

292 



VOLTAIRE 

more like a richly colored novel of adventure than a strictly- 
truthful history of the life of Charles, although written with 
a strict regard to facts. Its portrayal is fascinating, and the 
political views of the author are penetrating, making it a 
model of historical narrative, just as his Siecle de Louis XIV 
is a model of political history, and his Essai sur les moeurs, 
of philosophical history. 

It was at this time that Voltaire entered into relations 
with the Prince Royal of Prussia, and kept up with him a 
curious correspondence. This connection with Frederick pro- 
cured for him a diplomatic mission to the court of the King 
of Prussia. The pretext which he made, in order to conceal 
the purpose of his journey, was his desire to escape the per- 
secutions which Boyer had incited against him. When Boyer 
complained to the king that Voltaire made him appear as a 
fool, the king answered, " That is a settled fact." 

On his return to Paris, Voltaire was elected a member of 
the Academy, but his enemies again succeeded in driving him 
away. He left Paris anew for Cirey, whence he betook himself 
to the court of Stanislas Leczinski, father-in-law of Louis 
XV. who had summoned him. After passing some time at 
Sceaux with the Duchesse du Maine, he went to Berlin to be 
with Frederick, the Salomon du Nord, as Voltaire named 
him, 1 who received him in Potsdam not as a poet, but as a 
king. He was given a splendid apartment in the palace, a 
sumptuous table and fine equipages, and he received the title 
of chamberlain and a pension of twenty thousand francs. 
In return the poet corrected the king's verses, and delighted 
him at supper by the grace and prolificness of his wit and 
intellect. Such men as Maupertuis, La Baumelle, La Mettrie, 
le marquis d'Argens, were gathered at the round table of the 
famous suppers of Frederick, under whose presidency morals, 
philosophy, and history were discussed. The first days were 
full of enchantment for Voltaire: " One hundred and fifty 
thousand victorious soldiers, no lawyers, opera, comedy, phi- 
losophy, poetry, a hero philosopher and poet, grandeur and 
graces, grenadiers and muses, trumpets and violins, repasts 
of Plato, society and liberty; who would believe it? It is 

1 He called Catherine of Russia "Semiramis." 
293 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

all true." For Voltaire this was the Palace of Alcina; but 
the enchantment was brief. Maupertuis, the life president 
of the Academy of Berlin, who was jealous of this French 
genius, and had become his enemy, set to work to embroil 
the king and the philosopher. Voltaire, in turn, pilloried 
him in his Diatribe du Docteur Akakia, medecin du Pape; 
but Frederick, having caused the pamphlet to be burned by 
the hand of the executioner, Voltaire, outraged, sent back to 
the king his cross, his key, and the certificate of his pension, 
and requested permission to depart, which he finally obtained, 
promising the king that he would return. At Frankfort he 
found an agent of Frederick who had been ordered to recover 
the collection of the king's poetic works, which Voltaire was 
supposed to have taken away with him; and this emissary 
kept him closely guarded in a tavern, for three weeks, until 
he should restore the precious package which, as a matter of 
fact, he had left behind him in his bags. Later an amicable 
correspondence was reestablished between the king and the 
philosopher; and it was the former who made the first ad- 
vances. Voltaire's fame, contested up to the time of his in- 
timacy with the King of Prussia, soon equalled a sovereign's 
after his return to France. 

Voltaire had several homes — one, on Genevan territory, 
a winter house at Montrion, near Ouchy; a mansion at Lau- 
sanne, rue du Grand- Chene, and, finally, two estates in 
France, in the immediate neighborhood of the frontier of 
Geneva, one at Tournay, the other — a quasi-royal residence— 
at Ferney. " All these dwellings," he wrote to d'Alembert, 
" are necessary for me. I am delighted with passing freely 
from one frontier to the other; were I only French, I would 
depend too much on France. As it is, I have an odd little 
kingdom in a Swiss valley. I am like the Old Man of the 
Mountain : with my four estates I am, so to speak, on my four 
paws. Montrion is my little cabin, my winter palace and shel- 
ter from the cruel north wind. Then I have arranged a house 
at Lausanne ; it might be called the Italian palace. Judge of 
it: fifteen windows look out on the lake— on the right, on the 
left, and in front; a hundred gardens are below my garden, 
bathed in the blue mirror of the lake. I see all Savoy across 
this little sea, and, beyond Savoy, the Alps rising in an am- 

294 



VOLTAIRE 

phitheater on which the sun's rays form a thousand effects of 
light ... I should like to keep you in this delicious place. 
There is no more beautiful aspect in the world; the Point 
of the Seraglio in Constantinople has no lovelier view. ' " When 
Voltaire went to install himself in his chateau of Les Delices, 
he expressed the sentiments which this sojourn inspired in 
him, in a poem which is a sort of hymn to Liberty, and is cer- 
tainly one of the most beautiful that came from his pen. After 
living for some time in Les Delices, Voltaire settled definitely 
at Ferney in 1758, and it is there that he passed the last 
twenty years of his life. His intellectual influence was enor- 
mous : Ferney was the literary capital of Europe during the 
twenty years of his sojourn there. He developed a great 
energy: he corresponded with all the crowned heads of Eu- 
rope, with ministers and with the learned, and made himself 
felt as philosopher, poet, historian, and defender of the op- 
pressed. All the world wished to see this king of literature: 
philosophers, actors, princes and peasants, priests and lay- 
men, came hither to look upon the man who made the world 
think as well as laugh 1 — who had more wit, it is said, than all 
the people put together. There are several distinct periods 
in Voltaire's life: in his youth he was a bel-esprit, occu- 
pied with the theater and light poetry; during his sojourn 
at the Chateau de Cirey he turned to serious subjects, includ- 
ing science; his life with King Frederick of Prussia crowned 
his celebrity; and at Ferney, Voltaire, all powerful, was 
himself a king; he made his influence felt throughout the 
Continent. When he died, Collin d'Harleville said: " Now 
we shall again have a republic of literary men." 

The years which he passed in his retreat at Ferney were 
extremely fruitful. His prolific mind produced a quantity 
of poems of the most varied types — satires, epistles, tales, 
epigrams, commentaries, sparkling philosophic narratives, 
numerous works of religious polemics, the Dictionnaire Phi- 
losophique, sl number of pamphlets directed against his ene- 
mies — the enemies of liberty of thought and tolerance. At 
the same time Voltaire kept up an immense correspondence, 

1 The temple of philosophy at Ermenonville has a column of Voltaire 
with the inscription: " Voltaire ridiculum." 

295 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

and animated with his spirit the Encyclopedic which d 'Alem- 
bert and Diderot were compiling. In this correspondence 
we find reflected the whole literary economic and moral life 
of his age. Of his letters, 1 more than twelve thousand, ad- 
dressed to seven hundred correspondents, and embracing a 
period of sixty years have been preserved; and these letters, 
admirably composed, with good sense, elegance, and facility, 
make of Voltaire one of the greatest of French prose writers. 
In 1737, he wrote the Conseils a un Journaliste, a golden book 
of instruction for editors and critics. One critic who has 
called him the " Journalist of all times," remarks that his 
works if written in our own days would appear in the form 
of brilliant leading articles or colloquial essays. As a matter 
of fact, Voltaire as a writer is universal ; his output embraces 
all forms of literature : lyric, epic, dramatic, poems, the novel, 
philosophical and critical essays, and historical narrations. 
In his tragedies, of which there are twenty-eight, he widened 
the field by introducing romantic and national subjects, and 
by picturing scenes not only in Greece and Rome, but in 
America, Palestine, and China. He adhered to the " three 
unities " of classic tradition, but swept aside theatrical con- 
ventions by causing the actors to discard their large hats 
with sweeping plumes, their knee breeches, silk stockings, and 
buckled gaiters, for costumes appropriate to their parts. In 
the seventeenth century, romantic love and ambition were the 
principal themes of tragedy. Voltaire enlarged this meager 
repertory of motive by making, in Zulime, Semiramis, Brutus, 
I'Orphelin de la Chine, and Merope, a study of parental 
affection; a portrayal of Christian sentiment in Alzire and 
Zaire; and a picture of chivalrous emotion in Tancrede. As 
an historian he likewise explored a new field. With Voltaire, 
history became narrative, literary and philosophical. To 
historical narrative, he declared, belonged not only the record 
of exterior circumstances, but that account of the human 
mind which exhibits man in his ascent from the barbaric 
state. Voltaire was thus the first historian who recognized 
that the history of civilization was an authorized factor in the 

1 The most complete collection is to be found in Moland's edition, vols, 
xxxiii-xlix. 

296 



VOLTAIRE 

historical narrative. In all these diverse forms of literature, 
Voltaire pursued the same aim. Like the Abbe de Saint- 
Pierre, "He understood the necessity of always repeating 
the same things in order to impress them on men's minds. 
But he knew what the good abbe was ignorant of — how es- 
sential it is to vary the form; and no one has so greatly 
excelled in this art." His end was none other than to free 
humanity from the yoke of superstition and fanaticism. 
Swept on by his ardor, and irritated by the persecutions to 
which he exposed himself, he often violated his purpose; but 
he attained it, too, and, in spite of his errors, or his excesses, 
his name must be inscribed among the benefactors of humanity. 
His letters in verse and in prose scintillate with wit and 
malice ; they bring before us the daily life of this man, whose 
prodigious activity, extending to everything, made him the 
self-appointed righter of all iniquities, and compelled the re- 
form of the criminal procedures in law when these seemed to 
him to be tainted with injustice. 

The private life of Voltaire bears witness to great benefi- 
cence. He made admirable use of his fortune, and his bene- 
factions were distinguished by nobility and delicacy. " We 
may count Voltaire," said Condorcet, " among the very few 
men in whom the love of humanity is a veritable passion." 
But, writes a French critic : ' ' not even Condorcet could quite 
condone the palpable faults of Voltaire, who completely 
lacked that cleanness of language and habits without which 
man always lowers himself — without which there is neither 
dignity nor true happiness for woman. This was a fault of 
the age — an age of reaction against the monastic rigor of 
an ascetic Christianity, and against the hypocrisy of the 
court of Louis XIV. It was not sufficiently understood in 
the eighteenth century, that the more they wished to free the 
spirit and liberate the mind of man, the less they should loosen 
the bonds of moral convention. Voltaire was, unfortunately, 
among those who permitted themselves the greatest license 
in this respect; and his literary style often savors of the 
levity of his morals." 

Few authors have been the object of so much comment 
by superficial students; and perhaps no other writer has 
called forth such contradictory criticisms. The praise and 

297 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

condemnation of opposing commentators have been alike ex- 
cessive and superlative. The superficial ones are ready with 
the judgment that he was a witty writer, with an excellent 
literary style, but a very bad man. Yet so complex was his 
nature, so many-sided was this remarkable being, that even 
those who have studied him exhaustively do not fully under- 
stand him. The truth is that Voltaire was something more 
than an author in the ordinary sense of that term; he was 
an integral part of the century itself with all its merits and 
shortcomings. 

" Den hochsten unter den Franzosen denkbaren, der 
Nation gemassesten Schrif tsteller, ' ' said Goethe of Voltaire. 
Again, writing to Eckerman (January 3, 1830), Goethe has 
spoken of the influence exercised upon his youth by the 
genius of the great Frenchman, and how he labored to escape 
it in order to develop his own individuality. Even to this 
day, the numerous editors of Voltaire's works are divided 
into two opposing factions ; but scan as we may the evidence 
of the opposition, it is difficult to see how Carlyle could have 
gone so far astray as to remark that in all of Voltaire he had 
not found " one grand thought.' ' The injustice of such a 
criticism, and its incompatibility with the simple record of 
Voltaire's labors in behalf of humanity, must be apparent to 
anyone who recalls his crusade against torture, slavery, judi- 
cial oppression, and the evils of a censored press. Here was 
a man who, all alone, with no other weapons than his intel- 
lect and his pen, opposed the terrible abuses rooted for 
centuries in the proceedings of the French criminal courts, 
who stirred all Europe with the power and the success of his 
efforts for reform. Moreover, he made himself felt in other 
practical affairs. During a time of erratic mercantile restric- 
tions, he was the first to declare for free trade, and to exploit 
the advantages, of a Suez Canal. 

It was in 1788, when almost eighty-four years of age, that 
Voltaire made a trip to Paris to enjoy his glory. His return 
was a veritable triumph, his entry into Paris that of a victo- 
rious king. They tell a story that during his journey, which 
took place in a rigorous winter, the postmasters wanted to 
assist his progress themselves; one man, old and infirm, not 
being able to mount a horse, recommended him to his postilion 

298 



VOLTAIRE 

in these words : ' ' Think of the honor which is yours in guid- 
ing this great man ; there are ten kings in Europe, but there 
is only one Voltaire on earth. ' ' After he had arrived in Paris, 
Voltaire stopped at the Hotel de Bernieres where the city, the 
court, the Academy, the philosophers, and artists came to 
pay tribute to him. " The enthusiasm with which he was 
received in Paris," says Condorcet, " spread to the common 
people. They paused before his windows ; they passed entire 
hours there, in the hope of seeing him for a moment; his 
carriage, forced to advance at a walk, was surrounded by a 
numerous crowd who blessed him and praised his works. 
The representation of Irene, in spite of the weakness of the 
tragedy, was the occasion for a new triumph for him. His 
bust was crowned in the theater with great applause, to the 
accompaniment of joyful cries, and tears of enthusiasm and 
tenderness. On his exit people cast themselves at his feet, 
they kissed his garments. " You want to make me die with 
pleasure; you smother me beneath roses! " exclaimed Vol- 
taire. The Abbe Duvernet, one of his biographers present at 
the scene, tells us that the people cried: " Honor to the phi- 
losopher who teaches us to think! Glory to the defender of 
Galas! Glory to the savior of Sirven and Montbailly! "* 
All this proves to what extent Voltaire had influenced public 
opinion by his attacks on fanaticism. When Voltaire, on 
coming to Paris, met Benjamin Franklin, the American phi- 
losopher presented his grandson to him, asking his blessing. 
* ' God and liberty, ' ' said Voltaire ; ' ' that is the only bene- 
diction suitable for the grandson of Mr. Franklin." God 
and liberty were, moreover, in two words, the sum of Vol- 
taire's philosophy. 

Voltaire survived this triumph but a short time. As he 
had not received the sacraments of the church, his inter- 
ment in the chapel of a monastery at Scellieres, of which his 
nephew was the Abbe, was accomplished by a kind of fraud. 
The government, rivaling the clergy in rancor, prohibited 
the press, which it absolutely controlled at this time, from 

1 Famous cases in which Voltaire was an indefatigable champion of 
justice miscarried: among the most sensational of which were those of 
Calas, Sirven, Montbailly, de La Barre, of the Comte de Lally, governor 
of the French possessions in India, and of the serfs of the Jura Mountains. 

299 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

speaking of his death, and the theatrical managers had orders 
not to play any of his dramas. In the time of the Terror, 
his remains were exhumed and transferred to the Pantheon 
with solemn pomp ; and to-day he figures in bas-relief on the 
front of this edifice. 

Voltaire was indeed the king of his century; at this time 
French literature gave tone to all Europe, and Voltaire was 
the principal representative of that literature. Under his 
scepter the republic of letters was transformed into a mon- 
archy ; and, although tempered by the talents, the specialties, 
the rivalries of contending interests, it took its general tone 
from this one man. Never did literature undergo such a 
royal rule. In his hands, tragedy took on an entirely new 
character, although it never reached the heights of Corneille 
or Racine; it became philosophic, moralizing, didactic, and 
aimed to persuade, without ignoring the art of pleasing. 
Zaire, the most beautiful tragedy of love that had been written 
since Racine, is Voltaire's masterpiece — " la piece enchante- 
resse, " as J. J. Rousseau called it. 



ZAIRE 

The argument of Zaire is as follows : It is the time of the 
crusades. Saladin has dethroned the last of the Lusignans, 
and recaptured the Holy Land from the Christians. Oros- 
mane, one of his successors, reigns in Jerusalem; but he is a 
sultan who loves progress, and who wants to be loved for 
himself by his subjects, by the Christians, and especially by 
Zaire, a young slave who has been reared in his palace. 
Lusignan, a prisoner for twenty years, is set free by Orosmane, 
and recognizes his son in a Christian knight, Nerestan, who 
has come from France to ransom the captives, together with 
his daughter, Zaire, who has been educated in Moham- 
medanism, and is about to marry the sultan. Lusignan is in 
despair, and utters those famous and beautiful verses which 
soften the heart of Zaire and make her promise to receive 
baptism. When Orosmane comes to seek her for the marriage 
ceremony, she hesitates ; he is jealous, suspects something, sur- 
prises her at the moment when Nerestan comes to lead her 
away for baptism, and stabs her. Nerestan explains every- 

300 



VOLTAIRE 

thing to him, and Orosmane, in despair, kills himself, after 
having opened the seraglio and given liberty to all his 
prisoners. 

MfiROPE (LA MESS&NIENNE) 

This is the plot of Merope: Cresphonte, King of Mes- 
senia, has been assassinated. The assassin, Polyphonte, has 
been able to keep his crime secret for fifteen years, and seeks 
to compel Merope, the widow of Cresphonte, who has remained 
mistress of the throne, to give him her hand in marriage. But 
she thinks only of her son, Egisthe, long since missing, who, 
exposed to the murderers of his father, has been taken secretly 
away from Messenia by his rescuer. One day a young man, 
alleged to be the murderer of this child, is brought to Merope. 
She wishes to punish him herself; but at the moment when 
she lifts the dagger to strike, she recognizes him as her son, 
who denounces the crimes of Polyphonte, and kills him, to 
the satisfaction of all. The following verses from Merope 
have become proverbial, and are frequently recalled : 

Le premier qui fut roi fut un soldat heureux. 1 

Qui sert bien son pays n'a pas besoin d'aieux. 2 

Quand on a tout perdu, quand on n'a plus d'espoir, 
La vie est un opprobre, et la mort un devoir. 3 

ALZIRE (L'AMfCRICAINE) 

Alzire is a philosophic tragedy in which there are some 
very beautiful verses on tolerance. Alzire, daughter of the 
Peruvian chief, Monteze, is, like her father, a convert to 
Christianity. She is pledged to wed Zamore — descended, like 
herself, from the kings of Peru ; but in Zamore 's absence the 
Spanish governor, Don Gusman, asks for her hand. Alzire, 
who thinks that Zamore has been killed, yields to the prayers 
of her father and consents to the marriage ; but immediately 

1 The first who was king was a fortunate soldier. 

2 He who serves his country well has no need of ancestors. 

8 When one has lost all, when one hopes no more, life is opprobrious and 
death a duty. 

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THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

after the ceremony, Zamore, who sees in Gusman a fortunate 
rival, the enemy of his gods and the oppressor of his country, 
reappears with his warriors. He slays Gusman, who, dying, 
forgives him, and commits his widow to Zamore 's charge. 



MAHOMET (L'IMPOSTEUR) 

The Mahomet of Voltaire is an ambitious impostor who, 
in order to elevate himself, imposes upon the credulity of 
men. He explains to Zopire, chief of Mecca, which he is 
besieging, his ideas and plans; he promises to do his best for 
Zopire, and to give him his due share in the great enterprise 
which he has formed. Zopire answers that he will never 
consent to be the accomplice of an impostor, and the struggle 
between the two men begins. Mahomet believes himself lost 
unless Zopire is put out of the way, and seeks to have him 
assassinated. He has taken into his camp Zopire 's two 
children, Seide and Palmire, whom Zopire has for a long time 
believed to be dead. These children, not knowing that they 
are brother and sister, have fallen in love with each other. 
Mahomet orders Seide to kill Zopire when Zopire offers sacri- 
fices to his gods. Seide consents; but at the moment when 
Zopire has been wounded, he recognizes his children. Seide, 
horrified at his own action and at that of Mahomet, wishes to 
denounce him before the assembled people ; but Mahomet has 
him poisoned, and when Seide accuses him of imposture, 
Mahomet exclaims, ' ' Thou has blasphemed against the prophet 
of God; thou shalt die! " Having been poisoned, Seide does 
indeed die before the eyes of the people, who continue devoted 
to Mahomet. This is the play which Voltaire dedicated to 
Pope Benedict XIV. We cite a familiar couplet from this 
play: 

Les mortels sont egaux, ce n'est point la naissance; 
C'est la seule vertu qui fait leur difference. 1 

Voltaire's other tragedies include La Mori de Cesar, 
borrowed from Shakespeare; Semiramis; Oreste; Tancrede, 

1 Mortals are equal; it is not birth — it is only virtue that differentiates 
them. 

302 



VOLTAIRE 

borrowed from Ariosto. Among his comedies are: Nanine; 
I'Ecossaise. 

The most important of Voltaire's compositions is his Essai 
sur les Moeurs et V Esprit des Nations depuis Charlemagne 
jusqu'a Louis XIV. Of his Siecle de Louis XIV, Voltaire 
says: "It is not only the life of the prince which I am 
describing, it is not only the annals of his reign; it is rather 
the history of the human mind, drawn from the most glorious 
century of intellectual life." Among his novels and prose 
tales are Zadig, Candide, L'Ingenu, La Princesse de Baby- 
lone, l f Homme aux Quarante Ecus. In the Dictionnaire 
Philosophique is condensed all his philosophic thought. His 
poems include Le Desastre de Lisbonne, the satires, and La 
Pucelle, a burlesque epic on Jeanne d'Arc, which caused him 
much tribulation during his lifetime. Some of his country- 
men never forgave him this offense against their national 
heroine. Voltaire pointedly made sport of her, whereas the 
German poet, Schiller, glorified her and made her appear as 
a divine being. In our day, Anatole France treats Joan of 
Arc in his usual skeptical way, while Andrew Lang, like 
Schiller, exalts her. 

On les persecute, on les tue, 
Sauf apres un long examen, 
A leur dresser une statue, 
Pour la gloire du genre humain. 1 

(Beranger.) 

The following are a few of Voltaire's epigrams: 

J'eus ete pres du Gange esclave des faux dieux — 
ChrStienne a Paris, Musulmane en ces lieux. 2 

(From Zaire.) 



1 They are persecuted and killed, but after a long critical examination 
a statue is erected to them for the glory of the human race. Schiller's 
prophecy, "Du wirst unsterblich leben," has realized itself: Joan of Arc 
was beatified by Pope Pius X, in 1909. 

2 On the Ganges I would have been a slave to false gods — a 
Christian in Paris, a Musulman in these places. 

303 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner. 1 

Je vous dois tout, puisque c'est moi qui vous aime. 2 

M. C. Lockwood says: " Popular conceptions of Voltaire 
are in some respects erroneous. He is regarded as an arch- 
infidel and the bitter foe of religion. On the contrary, he 
was always a deist. He never assails the ' Sermon on the 
Mount,' nor can one who reads him carefully believe that 
there would not have been a subtle sympathy between him 
and the best religious minds of later days. He never mocked 
men who lived good lives, nor opposed with any bitterness 
those who were the friends of liberty of conscience.' ' 

The inscription, " Deo erexit Voltaire," 3 on the church 
given by him to Ferney is not a sacrilegious jest, but a re- 
proof to those who dedicated churches to the Saints and 
never to the Deity. Voltaire was in earnest in his Deism 
because he could not conceive a well-regulated universe with- 
out a supreme power ; but no religious thought seems to have 
entered into his conception of God. In his Ode to the author 
of the book, De tribus impost oribus, he says: " Si Dieu 
n 'existait pas, il f audrait 1 'inventer. " 4 In his poem to the 
King of Prussia he wrote: 

Nous adorions tous deux le Dieu de Tunivers; 

Car il en est un, quoi qu'on dise : 

Mais nous n'avions pas la sottise 

De le deshonorer par des cultes pervers. 5 

Of his Histoire de Jenni, ou I'Athee et le Sage, La Harpe 
says : ' ' It is a little philosophical novel against atheists, and 
therefore very edifying for good atheists. Finally, Voltaire 



1 To understand all is to forgive all. 

2 1 owe you all, since it is I who love you. 

» "Erected by Voltaire to God." 

* " If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." 

6 We both worshiped the God of the universe; 

For there is one, whatever may be said ; 

But we did not commit the folly 

Of dishonoring Him by perverse creeds. 
304 



VOLTAIRE 

himself, in his letter — August 4, 1775 — to d'Argental, says: 
' ' I have always regarded atheists as impudent sophists ; I 
have said it, I have printed it. The author of Jenni cannot be 
suspected of thinking like Epicurus. Spinoza himself, admits 
a supreme intelligence in nature. ' ' 



21 



CHAPTER XX 

MONTESQUIEU, BUFFON, AND ROUSSEAU 
MONTESQUIEU 

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu et de la 
Brede, was born in 1689, at the chateau de la Brede, near 
Bordeaux, of a noble family. He kept aloof from court favor, 
and was therefore in a position to write as independently 
as was possible in those days. Having been offered a payment 
by grace of the court, he refused it, saying: " N'ayant point 
fait de bassesses je n'avais pas besoin d'etre console par des 
graces.' ' (Having committed no base act, I did not need the 
consolation of favors.) But he was far from being indifferent 
to the prerogatives of his birth and to the privileges attached 
to his manorial possessions ; and all this was made apparent in 
the development of his ideas. 

The Baron de Montesquieu was the apostle of political 
liberty.. Destined for the law, to which profession his family 
belonged, he gave himself up to the study of jurisprudence 
at a very early age — relieving the monotony of it by reading 
books of history and travel and the works of ancient writers. 
The first subject on which Montesquieu exercised his pen 
was the thesis that the idolatry of the pagans did not deserve 
eternal damnation. He was thus — at the age of twenty — 
already manifesting his attachment for the ancients and his 
hatred of religious intolerance, and, at the same time, his 
critical spirit. But this essay he did not consider worthy of 
publication. 

Having been admitted to the Parlement of Bordeaux in 
1714, he soon succeeded his uncle as the president a mortier. 1 

1 Mortier, formerly a round cap of black velvet, laced with gold and 
with a crown in the form of a mortar-board, worn by the presidents of such 

306 



MONTESQUIEU 

He employed the leisure time which his office permitted 
him in studying moral, political, and historical sciences. He 
read a dissertation in the Academie de Bordeaux, of which 
he was the founder, on the " Policy of the Romans in Re- 
ligion " — which was, as it were, the prelude of his great 
work. 

The principal result of his leisure was the Lettres persanes. 
This is the imaginary correspondence of three Persians, Rica, 
Usbek, and Rhedi, who go to Europe to study its customs and 
its institutions. Rhedi tarries in Venice, while Rica and Usbek 
repair to Paris. From the time of their departure an active 
correspondence is carried on between Usbek, his concubines, 
Zachi, Zephis, Fatime, Roxane, Zelis, and their eunuchs: and 
between the three travelers and their friends at Ispahan. 
Very soon discord breaks out in the seraglio of Usbek: the 
eunuchs endeavor to right matters ; one of the favorites, Rox- 
ane, poisons herself after addressing some ironical farewells 
to the master whom she has deceived. 

Montesquieu realized that without the narrative of sala- 
cious episodes peculiar to the harem, his Lettres persanes, 
with all their statesmanlike wisdom, would never have at- 
tained wide popularity; and he showed his perspicacity by 
employing these and like incidents in order to get a popular 
hearing for the serious and mighty ideas which animated 
his work. In these letters he passes in review, with per- 
fect freedom, the politics, the religion, and the entire society 
of France. It is a bitter satire of the ridiculous charac- 
teristics of European society, in which Montesquieu touches 
upon the most serious questions of philosophy, politics, and 
morality. For the most part the Persians, Usbek and 
Rica, depict the lives and acts of the Oriental despots, and 
compare them with the French monarchs, whose weaknesses 
and defects are plainly shown through a thin disguise; 
but occasionally the author is openly and bitterly satirical, 
as, for instance, in Letter XXXVTI, describing the aged King 
Louis XIV : 

" Le roi de France est vieux. Nous n'avons point d 'ex- 
assemblies: hence — president a mortier. It is nowadays the cap worn by 
the judges of the Cour de Cassation and the Cour des Comptes. 

307 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

emple dans nos histoires d'un monarque qui ait si longtemps 
regne. On dit qu'il possede a un tres-haut degre le talent 
de se faire obeir: il gouverne avec le meme genie sa famille, 
sa cour, son etat. On lui a souvent entendu dire que, de tous 
les gouvernements du monde, celui des Turcs ou celui de 
noire auguste sultan lui plairait le mieux; tant il fait cas 
de la politique orientale. J'ai etudie son caractere, et j'y ai 
trouve des contradictions qu'il ni'est impossible de resoudre: 
par exemple, il a un ministre qui n'a que dix-huit ans, et une 
maitresse qui en a quatre-vingts. II aime a gratifier ceux 
qui le servent; mais il paye aussi liberalement les assiduites, 
ou plutot l'oisivete de ses courtisans, que les campagnes 
laborieuses de ses capitaines: souvent il prefere un homme 
qui le deshabille, ou qui lui donne la serviette lorsqu'il se 
met a table, a un autre qui lui prend des villes, ou lui gagne 
des batailles." 1 

In these Letters 2 Montesquieu's candor is unrestrained; 
all the burning questions of politics and society are discussed, 
without however, being decided. He attacks all questions, 
not with an angry eloquence, but as an impersonal observer 
who does not commit himself. He says: " The nature and 
aim of these letters are so exposed that they will never de- 
ceive people save those who wish to deceive themselves. ' ' 
Villemain describes the Lettres persanes as "the most profound 

1 "The King of France is old. We have no example in history of a 
monarch who has reigned so long. It is said that he possesses in a very 
high degree the talent of enforcing obedience: he governs with the same 
genius his family, his court, his state. He has often been heard to say that 
of all the governments of the world that of the Turks or that of our august 
Sultan would please him best; so much does he think of Oriental politics. 
I have studied his character, and I have found contradictions impossible for 
me to solve: for instance, he has a minister eighteen years of age and a 
mistress who is eighty. He loves to gratify those who serve him; but he 
rewards as liberally the assiduities or rather the idleness of his courtiers 
as he does the laborious campaigns of his captains ; often he prefers a man 
who undresses him or one who gives him a napkin when seated at table, 
to another who takes cities or wins battles for him." 

2 A few years ago Montesquieu's descendants at last consented to the 
publication of his manuscripts in the archives of the chateau de La Brede; 
and from these Professor Barkhausen of the law faculty in Bordeaux has 
since written a book: Montesquieu: ses idees et ses ozuvres. 

308 



MONTESQUIEU 

of frivolous books. ' ' M. Tourneux, in his preface to the Jouaust 
edition of Montesquieu's works, says it is probable that Mon- 
tesquieu borrowed some of his ideas in the Lettres persanes 
from the Spectator of Addison, and some from the Amuse- 
ments serieux et comiques of Dufresny. He notes that the 
Lettres were published in Rouen (as were Madame de Se- 
vigne's letters and Voltaire's Histoire de Charles XII), and 
not in Holland, as so often recorded • and that the Holland pub- 
lication was the second edition, corrected for Cardinal Fleury 
and supervised by his secretary, the Abbe Duval. 1 

Montesquieu's reputation was suddenly established; the 
Lettres, we are told, " sold like bread." The success of the 
work was so great, and the debate it provoked so prodigious, 
that, according to what he himself says, the booksellers em- 
ployed every means to secure a series of similar works. They 
buttonholed every one they met, saying: " Write me a set 
of Lettres persanes.'* 

Montesquieu's Temple de Gnide and Arsace et Ismenie 
show traces of that licentiousness characteristic of his con- 
temporaries, which he himself, despite the dignity of his 
character, did not escape. His Histoire Veritable is a novel 
that reflects Montesquieu 's view of the world : it tells how the 
servant of an Indian bonze makes use of his master's piety 
to turn money into his own coffers. He lives in great splen- 
dor, but is finally unmasked and becomes a fugitive. As a 
punishment for his sins, he undergoes successive transmigra- 
tions of the soul, assuming, by turns, the form of Apis, the 
Bull of Memphis worshiped by the Egyptians ; of the elephant 
of the King of Thibet; of a poet, a courtier, a man of the 
world, a tramp, a gambler, a prestidigitator, a cab horse, a 
eunuch, a courtesan, etc. 

Montesquieu thought himself entitled to a place in the 
Academy, which in the eighteenth century was considered 
more important than it is at present. Cardinal Fleury, then 
prime minister, had not read the Lettres persanes; but he took 
exception to them on the strength of the report that they were 
an offense to religion and the state. The doors of the Acad- 
emy were barred to the author, for in the mouth of Rica, 

1 Newest edition by H. Barkhausen, 1900. 
309 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Montesquieu had put the words: There is no tribunal in the 
world less respected than the Academy. Then Montesquieu 
resorted to a ruse to gain favor with the minister. He pub- 
lished a new edition of the Lettres in which he abridged and 
modified the doubtful passages, and then himself took his book 
to the Cardinal who, charmed with the literary style, declared 
it to be " more agreeable than dangerous.'' They parted on 
the best of terms, and Montesquieu was received into the 
Academy. Shortly afterwards he left France for a voyage 
into foreign lands, in order to study the laws and the customs 
of their inhabitants. He first went to Vienna, and was re- 
ceived at the court of the Prince of Savoy, where he found 
absolute monarchy on another soil; and thence to Hungary, 
where, as M. Villemain says, he could record the waning 
expressions of that feudal vigor he so vividly described in a 
few lines of the Esprit des lois. He then passed over to Italy, 
where he could study various forms of government: at Flor- 
ence the absolute authority, easily supported, of a Grand 
Duke; at Venice, the aristocratic republic with its Council 
of Ten and its mysterious rule ; at Rome, the pontificate. Here 
he was presented to Pope Benedict XIV, who offered him 
(so the story goes) a life-long dispensation from fasting. 
Montesquieu, greatly flattered, hastened to accept; but when 
he saw the bill of expenses connected with the papal document 
in the case, he returned the papers to the Pope's secretary 
saying: " Monseigneur, I thank his Holiness for his great 
kindness; but as he is such an honorable man, I shall depend 
on his word." 

From Italy, Montesquieu went to Switzerland — the country 
of William Tell, the refuge of liberty, the land of republican- 
ism par excellence; thence to Holland, where he found, in 
another form, the image of liberty and republican institutions. 
In Holland he met Lord Chesterfield, who took him on his 
yacht to London and presented him to the queen. Here again, 
in another guise, he found political liberty diffused by a mixed 
constitution, the mechanism of which he himself was to ex- 
plain so admirably. He arrived there in 1729, the very date 
of Voltaire's departure from England, and remained two 
years, during which he learned to love and understand liberty 
— a thing which a Frenchman at that time could hardly com- 

310 



MONTESQUIEU 

prehend. Rich in observation and materials, Montesquieu 
then retired to his chateau de la Brede, in 1731, in order to 
elaborate them in peace, and compose from them the work he 
was planning. He himself said : ' ' When I was out in the 
world, I loved it so that I could not endure retirement ; when I 
am on my estates, I no longer think of the world. ' ' 

Yillemain has remarked that this necessity for retirement 
was something felt by almost all the thinkers of the eighteenth 
century. Voltaire, after trying a number of retreats, came 
at last to settle down at Ferney, where he passed the last 
twenty years of his life. Rousseau lived in the country al- 
most constantly, and always sought solitude. Buffon pro- 
duced his great works in his chateau at Montbar ; Montesquieu, 
in his chateau de la Brede. They all wished to escape at once 
the distractions and the importunities of the great cities; 
some sought a greater liberty in their retirement. Par from 
the world, they acted powerfully on it. 

The first fruit of Montesquieu's retirement was the Con- 
siderations sur les causes de la grandeur et de la decadence 
des Romains, in which he sums up with the conciseness of 
genius the institutions and customs of the Romans, and de- 
scribes with a most extraordinary precision and penetra- 
tion the causes that explain the growth and fall of their 
empire. 

In this work, Montesquieu showed himself a great historian, 
and especially a profound moralist — an initiator of that 
method which has since been called the psychology of nations. 
But this was only a detached portrait of the vast whole. 1 
Montesquieu had undertaken to embrace in a single work the 
laws of all nations, by reducing them to fundamental princi- 
ples and revealing their spirit; whence the title, The Spirit 
of Laws, a work of sociology — his capital work — which contains 
all his thought and all his life. He labored on it for twenty 
years: " At last," he says, " I have seen my work begin, 
develop, advance, and end." It is a masterpiece of French 
literature. At the outset, the author postulates laws and 
justice as eternal and absolute — man being given such as he 

1 The Considerations were originally meant to be a part of the Esprit 
des Lois; but the author published them separately. 

311 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

is organized to receive. There follows a review of various 
legislations and customs which have contributed to the pros- 
perity of nations or caused their fall; of circumstances, aris- 
ing at the birth of nations, and moral principles which, trans- 
formed into revolutions, changed the face of the world. The 
author indicates in the very nature of governments the prin- 
ciples that animate them ; and from these principles, combined 
with the needs of peoples, he deduces the laws that have made 
them live and that still sustain them. He declares for tolera- 
tion of the most absolute nature in matters of religion. As 
for his political ideal, after having examined the three prin- 
cipal forms of government — the republic, monarchy, despo- 
tism — he finds it in Great Britain's constitution, in which 
democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy are happily blended. 
Montesquieu in this work, makes the generalization that the 
development of a people, and — above all — its laws, depend 
upon conditions of the land, climate, religion, and tempera- 
ment. The language he employs is that of the dispassionate 
observer; for this reason the book was permitted to circulate 
freely in France and became the basis for the liberal political 
science of modern times; for this reason also it did not meet 
with the approval of the rabid republicans who came after 
him. Nevertheless, it eloquently expounded for the first 
time the fundamental ideas expressed in the Revolution fifty 
years later, although Montesquieu did not desire the over- 
throw of the monarchy. Believing that France was not ripe 
for a republic, he sought rather to bring about the English 
political ideal of sound relations between the ruler and the 
people. Prolem sine matre creatam was the motto of his 
Esprit des lois (Spirit of Laws), which consists of thirty books. 
Of these, the first eight discuss the laws in relation to govern- 
ment in its three forms — the monarchy, the republic, and 
despotism, with their corresponding attributes of honor, virtue, 
and fear ; each' government perishing through an exaggera- 
tion of its particular principles. Books nine to thirteen, treat 
of the laws with reference to liberty, and of the British con- 
stitution. Books fourteen to eighteen, consider the laws in 
connection with the nature of the climate and the land, and 
refer to the origin of slavery. Book fifteen is devoted to 
attacking slavery, serfdom, torture, and the inquisition. 

312 



MONTESQUIEU 

Book nineteen treats of laws with reference to customs; books 
twenty to twenty -three, of laws in their bearing on commerce, 
finance, and population; books twenty-four and twenty-five 
of laws in relation to religion. Books twenty-six to thirty 
are concerned with the history of the right of inheritance of 
the Romans and the Francs, and include a study of feudal 
laws. 

It was at Geneva that the two first editions of the Esprit 
des lois were published. Its success far surpassed the author's 
hopes; there were twenty-two editions in the space of a year 
and a half, and the work was soon translated into all Euro- 
pean languages. Objections, criticisms, epigrams, were not 
lacking. Voltaire eulogized the work in this phrase: " The 
human race had lost its charters; M. Montesquieu has redis- 
covered and restored them." Montesquieu was furiously 
attacked as an atheist in a journal entitled Nouvelles Ecclesi- 
astiques, and the theologians of the Sorbonne prepared to 
censure his work, but his sole reply to his critics was his 
1 ' Defense of the Spirit of the Laws ' ' — a masterpiece of irony 
and eloquence. After the publication of the " Spirit of 
Laws," which capped his glory but did not change his life 
and his character, Montesquieu felt his strength declining. 
He died in 1755, at the age of seventy years. The priest at 
his bedside said to him a few moments before his death : l ' You 
understand, sir, how great is God ? " " Yes," answered 
Montesquieu, " and how petty men are! " 

Montesquieu is one of the greatest thinkers and writers of 
France — a prince in the realm of intellect. His life was that 
of a sage. He loved and practised virtue because virtue is 
right and leads to happiness through its regard for the just 
and true ; he did much good without ostentation, and enjoyed 
the peace of a clear conscience. We know from his own words 
that he was naturally happy: " I awake in the morning 
with a secret joy at seeing the light; I behold the sun with a 
feeling of exultation, and am content all the rest of the day. ' ' 
He was passionately fond of reading, study, and literary 
composition. " Study," he says, " has been for me the sov- 
ereign remedy for the ills of life, since I never have had a dis- 
appointment which an hour's reading could not dispel." 
Montesquieu was out of his element in conversation; he him- 

313 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

self said that he was incapable of delivering a lecture, and 
he was at his best only when writing. " Timidity/ ' he con- 
fesses, " has been the scourge of my life; it seems to arrest 
the action of my vital organs, tie my tongue, cloud my 
thoughts, and distort my expressions. Yet I have never been 
less subject to these difficulties and attacks before men of 
education than before fools, because I could hope that they 
would understand me, and that gave me confidence.' ' He 
adds, however, with naive satisfaction, that on great occa- 
sions his mind worked clearly enough. " While at Luxem- 
burg/ ' he tells us, " in the hall in which the Emperor dined, 
Prince Linski said to me : ' You, sir, who come from France, 
are probably astonished to see the Emperor so badly housed.' 
1 My lord,' said I, ' I am pleased to see a country where the 
subjects of the Emperor are better lodged than their master. ' 
While in Piedmont, King Victor asked me: ' Sir, are you 
related to the Abbe de Montesquieu, whom I have seen here 
with the Abbe d'Estrades? ' * Sire,' said I to him, ' Your 
Majesty is like Csesar, who never forgot a name.' " It comes 
to us from another source that some one insisted on persuad- 
ing him to believe a thing difficult to accept, and with weari- 
some persistence added: " If this is not true, I will give you 
my head " — " I accept it," answered Montesquieu. " Tri- 
fling gifts cement strong friendships." 

He could accommodate himself to the different character- 
istics of peoples as he could to those of individual persons. 
" When I am in France," he used to say, " I make friends 
with everyone ; in England, with no one. In Italy I pay com- 
pliments to everybody; in Germany I drink with every- 
body. " As a French critic writes : ' ' There was in his compo- 
sition something better than this adaptability to all tastes; 
there was that eighteenth-century breadth of sentiment which 
we call cosmopolitanism: he could easily have said with Soc- 
rates, I am not only a citizen of Athens ; I am a citizen of the 
world. Such was Montesquieu, whose essential moderation of 
character is not to be confused with indifference, nor inter- 
preted as an offspring of egotism — a moderation that did not 
exclude a certain warmth, tempered but real, not only for his 
friends and for the unfortunate, but for the public good and 
the welfare of humanity. It was this temperamental modera- 

314 



MONTESQUIEU 

tion that caused, or at least supported, the moderation of his 
mind. Hence his impartiality, his breadth of view, his in- 
telligent grasp of history, and his respect for tradition." 

BUFFON 

Georges Louis Le Clerc, Comte de Buffon, was born at 
Montbard, Cote d'Or, in 1707. Of an ancient family of law- 
yers, in easy circumstances, honorable and esteemed, he was 
early in life able to choose his career. In spite of the paternal 
traditions, he devoted himself unhesitatingly to science — 
first of all to mathematics and general physics. After having 
accompanied a young Englishman, the Duke of Kingston, and 
his tutor to Italy, and then to England, he began to gain prom- 
inence by the translation of two works of a scientific nature — 
the Statique des vegetaux of Hales and the Traite des flexions 
of Newton. When he was only twenty-six years of age, his 
books gained him admission to the Academy of Sciences, 
though his writings at this time gave little hint of the renown 
in store for him. Appointed superintendent of the Royal 
Gardens, in 1739, he had cultivated the natural sciences very 
little; it was therefore by accident, and, in a way, officially, 
that Buffon became a naturalist. After ten years of research 
and meditation, he published the first three volumes of his 
Histoire naturelle, generate et particuliere, avec la description 
du cabinet du roi. The first volume contains the Theorie de 
la Terre and Systeme sur la formation des planetes; the second 
volume, the Histoire generate des animaux and the Histoire 
particuliere de t'homnie; the third, his Description du cabinet 
du roi and Les varietes de Vespece humaine. After an inter- 
val of ten years, he published twelve volumes on the history 
of quadrupeds; and, some years later, ten volumes of the 
Histoire naturelle des oiseaux et des mineraux, together with 
seven volumes of supplements. This great work established 
Buff on 's fame, not only as a naturalist, but as a writer. He 
devoted forty years of his life to it, and was assisted by such 
collaborators as the savant Daubenton, 1 the Abbe Bexon, and 

1 Daubenton's special work was concerned with the anatomy and 
dissection of animals. 

315 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Guineau de Montbeliard. Yet even then he did not finish 
the task, which was completed by Lacepede, from Buffon's 
notes, with the publication of Les serpents (1789), and with 
Lacepede 's original work in six volumes, Les poissons et les 
cetaces. Thirty years separate the Theorie de la Terre (1749) 
from les Epoques de la Nature (1779, fifth volume of his sup- 
plements) ; and, as if the natural historian had somehow 
wrested from his study of nature the secret of eternal youth, 
the style of the later volume, written by the hand of a sep- 
tuagenarian, cannot be distinguished from the first, except 
for its greater accuracy of observation and perfection of form. 
The Theorie de la Terre had astounded the world ; the Epoques 
de la Nature is perhaps, among all the works of the eighteenth 
century, that which elevated most the imagination of men. 
Following his argument, we see that at a date extremely 
remote a comet was hurled into the sun; several fragments 
were detached, and one of these fragments became the earth. 
After glowing for thousands of years, like the sun, it became 
gradually colder, eventually producing organic beings at 
first inferior, but progressively more perfect animals. In the 
sixth epoch, man appears on the scene. These six epochs 
are almost in accord with the six days of the Bible, if we 
admit that these days designate periods of indefinite length. 
Buffon traces eloquent pictures of these imaginary epochs, 
especially in the last of his works, which is considered a master- 
piece of style. His ideas are, in general, conjectures ; several, 
however, have been admitted by science. Less conjectural 
is his history of animate beings. He begins by establishing 
the difference that separates the plant from the animal — an 
extremely minute difference, if we take the germ at the begin- 
ning, but which is accentuated in proportion as each being 
develops. Then he marks the resemblance and differences 
between the man and the animal ; he shows us the genus homo 
in dual form — composed of a body in which the lower appe- 
tites rule and an intelligence that directs and dominates the 
instincts, and, in weak natures, is sometimes dominated by 
them. There is in this history a celebrated passage in which 
the first man tells in what order he has acquired his ideas, 
and how these ideas are entirely the result of his sensations. 
Buffon then enters into the details of the human structure ; he 

316 



BUFFON 

analyzes the five senses, he follows the development of the 
human being from its birth to its death. At this last point 
he challenges the terrors death inspires in us, and tries to 
prove, by facts and reasoning, that death in itself is not very 
painful. Next he passes in review all human races. In regard 
to the origin of beings, Buffon believes in spontaneous genera- 
tion ; he supposes that at each instant, nature produces germs 
capable of becoming organized beings by a sort of fermenta- 
tion. The most popular part is that devoted to animals; he 
has described in this volume two hundred species of quad- 
rupeds and eight hundred species of birds. Every one of these 
descriptions is a painting; he is the first among the moderns 
to combine natural history with eloquence of language. Sev- 
eral of his descriptions are celebrated; among those oftenest 
cited are the accounts concerning the horse, which he calls 
the " noble warrior "; the lion, which is to him a " generous 
king "; the tiger, a " cruel statesman "; the fox, an " adroit 
thief. ' ' All these animals are described according to the rela- 
tions which Buffon found between them and men. He did for 
nature what Montesquieu has done for history ; he sought for 
fundamental laws by patient study of facts. 

The first volumes of his Histoire Naturelle were his pass- 
port to the French Academy ; on his admission to membership 
in 1753, he pronounced a discourse on literary style, in which 
occurs the famous phrase, " Le style est l'homme meme," 1 
which has since been changed to the oft-quoted " Le style, 
c'est rhomme." This is conspicuously true of Buffon: his 
style reflects his pompous habits, his elevation of ideas, his 
nobility, and his majestic ways. In the chateau of Montbard 
he worked, from early dawn in gala costume — a powdered 
periwig on his head, great lace ruffles 2 at his wrists and a 
sword girded at his side; for, as he said, he could not work 
unless he felt himself becomingly dressed. 

Buffon toiled indefatigably fourteen hours a day, his ser- 
vant calling him at five in the morning, with orders to use 

1 " Les connaissances, les faits et les d£couvertes . . . sont hors de 
rhomme: le style est l'homme meme." (Discours de reception a, l'Aca- 
demie Francaise, 1753.) 

2 These lace cuffs of his have become proverbial as characterizing 
affectation of style, manners, or personal behavior. 

317 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

violence if necessary. This servant discharged his peculiar 
duty during sixty years, which led Buffon to remark: " I 
owe to Joseph at least twelve volumes of my books." In his 
study the only ornament was a portrait of Newton, and here 
he passed long hours meditating, correcting, and reading 
aloud to assure himself of the perfect harmony of his phrases. 
He wrote laboriously, often spending a whole morning in 
finding the perfect expression for a thought. It is said that 
he rewrote his Etudes de la Nature eleven times. This inces- 
sant labor explains his numerous works, his pure and harmoni- 
ous style, and his definition of genius, which he calls a lt long 
patience." On Sundays he went to church accompanied by 
a Capuchin friar, his confessor and his steward; he walked, 
with head held high among his vassals, to his lordly pew, 
where he seated himself with great pomp and received the 
incense, the holy water, and the other honors due his rank. 
It was this habitual loftiness of demeanor, and its reflection in 
his literary style, which prompted Voltaire to say that Buffon 's 
natural history was not natural. Personally he seems to 
have had no other religion than a calm and serious naturalism ; 
no other " doctrine of morals " than obedience to necessary 
and immutable laws. He has been reproached for believing 
that insignificant things should be elevated by ornate diction, 
which often gives his style a studied and pompous eloquence. 
But in the correspondence of Buffon collected and annotated 
by Nadault de Buffon (1860), one may trace the character of 
the man, which is much more natural and simple than his 
writings would lead one to believe. Among his letters are 
some very touching ones to his son, to Madame Daubenton, 
and Madame Necker, his devoted friend, in whose arms 
Buffon expired. 

The career of Buffon offers few events that are particu- 
larly striking ; it was peaceful, worthy, and glorious. His time 
was divided between the Royal Gardens (now Jar din des 
Plantes), and his estate at Montbard; it would be hard to 
find such an analogy in the life of any other man of letters. 
He was, moreover, one of those who live wisely and calmly, 
though adorned with no mean amount of glory. Buffon was 
a literary man as well as a scholar ; hence he was open to the 
assaults of emotion. Yet he kept his mind free from such 

318 



ROUSSEAU 

conflict. His two ambitions were science and fame. Fully 
convinced of the superiority of his genius, upon being asked 
how many great men there were, he answered simply : ' ' Five 
— Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself/ ' His 
good opinion of himself is not so surprising when we consider 
that few writers have enjoyed such universal homage. The 
sovereigns of Europe honored him with their visits or with 
rich presents. Rousseau, during a visit to Montbard, knelt 
and kissed the threshold of the door to the pavilion where 
Buffon composed his Eistoire Naturelle. In the course of 
Great Britain's war with her American colonies, some French 
privateers captured a vessel on which was a box marked with 
Button's address; this box was sent intact to him at Paris. 
During his lifetime, a statue was erected in his honor at the 
entrance of the Museum of Natural History, with the in- 
scription, Majestati naturce par ingenium (" His genius 
equals the majesty of nature "). He justified this inscription 
admirably by the elevation, the fullness, and the tranquil 
majesty of his style, in which were reflected the dignity of 
his life, the grandeur of his demeanor, and the pride of 
his manners. 

One of the four great prose writers of the eighteenth 
century, he towers above all his literary contemporaries; 
though in ultimate influence he falls short of Voltaire, Mon- 
tesquieu, and Rousseau. He had all the power of a talent 
without passion — a talent which seeks its end only by dint of 
intelligence, and appeals only to the intellect. Buffon — im- 
posing through his works, the greatness of his talent, the na- 
ture of his brain — died on the eve of the Revolution, in 1788. 

ROUSSEAU 

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in 1712 at Geneva, was the 
son of a watchmaker ; deprived of his mother, separated from 
his father, for a long time he led an adventurous life. Ap- 
prenticed to an engraver who maltreated him, he escaped 
from his master, and was sheltered by a lady in Savoy, 
Madame de Warens, who, with charming qualities of mind 
and heart, led an irregular life and was possessed of false 
ideas. Rousseau was by turns a clerk, a teacher, a music 

319 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

master, a lackey for a countess, and a servant in a house in 
Turin, where his master, discovering his abilities, made him 
his secretary. But Rousseau soon tired of this, and joined a 
comrade with whom he led a vagabond life in Italy and 
Switzerland, eking out a livelihood by showing for a few 
sous, a fountain that had the appearance of changing water 
into wine. Finally, this genius and Jack-of-all-trades acted 
for a time as secretary to the French Ambassador at Venice. 
Ever a dreamer, and impractical, he returned at intervals 
to Madame de Warens, at Chambery, and especially to her 
country house of Les Charmettes, where he completed his 
studies in solitude, and practiced the art of writing. He thought 
that he had found, in a new method of noting music, the 
means to help his benefactress, whose affairs were in disorder, 
and he went to Paris to submit it to the Academy of Sciences ; 
but the Academy pronounced it impracticable. He succeeded, 
however, in having presented at the Opera two little pieces 
of which he had composed both the music and the words: 
he Devin de village (The Village Soothsayer), and Les Muses 
galantes, in imitation of Italian composers; but he did not 
succeed in making a reputation as a composer of music. Le 
Devin de village was received very favorably at the court of 
Louis XV, and in other circles, but, as was characteristic of 
Rousseau, he hurled at his supporters his Lettre sur la mu~ 
sique frangaise, in which he harshly criticised the productions 
of French music, and thus cut off his chance for further suc- 
cess. Poverty was at his door; he had contracted in Paris, 
an alliance with a vulgar person in every respect unworthy 
of him — an alliance that became a marriage in fact, and exer- 
cised an unfortunate influence on his whole life. When chil- 
dren were born to him, he placed them in the foundling asy- 
lum. He himself tells us about it in his famous Confessions, 
and shamelessly writes that he did it " gaillardement et 
sans scruple.'' Afterwards, on second thought, he explains 
that neither he nor their mother could have reared them de- 
cently. 

Rousseau had tried everything, and succeeded in nothing. 
With an extreme vivacity of imagination his power of con- 
ception so outstripped his capacity for expression that he 
believed the calling of a writer was unsuited to him. One 

320 



ROUSSEAU 

day he was informed of a question propounded by a literary 
society of Dijon: " Has the reestablishment of the arts and 
sciences contributed to corrupt or purify morals? " This 
was the spark which fired the mine. Rousseau, bursting for 
utterance, exploded his pent-up powers. All the tumultuous 
thoughts crowding in his brain took form; all the bitterness 
of his heart overflowed. He wrote rapidly the Discours sur 
les sciences et les arts, which, at the age of thirty-seven 
years, opened his career. In this work he maintained that 
the development of the arts had served to corrupt customs 
and institutions. The Academy was astounded; his thesis, 
though false and absurd, was supported with an eloquence so 
impassioned, and a style so incomparable that the prize was 
given to this enemy of the sciences and arts, and, with the aid 
of the attendant publicity, Rousseau found himself suddenly 
famous. The Discours sur les sciences was followed by the 
Discours sur Vinegalite. These two extraordinary composi- 
tions rest one upon the other, and develop, under two differ- 
ent aspects, the same thought. Rousseau, in his first work, 
condemned the sciences; in the second, he even condemned 
society. He held that the sciences and arts had corrupted the 
human race. He regretted the simplicity of primitive peoples 
— even the savage state, without education or progress; he 
regretted that the human race had ever established society, 
property, inequality. Yet his conclusions, and especially the 
commentaries which he wrote to defend his two Discours, are 
less excessive than his first assertions. He modified his first 
exaggerated statements and held that in accordance with 
the very nature of man, the savage state cannot endure, 
and that society and property, once established, cannot be 
suppressed; but that it is a great evil that moral progress 
has not kept pace with intellectual and material progress, and 
that we prefer the talents to the virtues of men. 

The Contrat social, ou principes du droit politique, which 
appeared shortly afterwards, hinges on the same sequence of 
ideas. The subject is the same as that of the Esprit des Lois, 
but the method is different. Between the epoch of savagery, in 
which men were independent and equal, and the present epoch 
in which they are unequal and dependent, there was con- 
cluded, he said, a tacit contract between the governed and 
22 321 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

those governing: the weak promised to obey the strong, on 
condition that they be protected ; the strong promised to pro- 
tect the weak, on condition that the weak obeyed them. But, 
according to the author, the rights on both sides are equal: 
if the weak revolt, they no longer have the right to be pro- 
tected; if the strong govern badly, they no longer have the 
right to be obeyed. And this is revolution. 

Le Contrat social is a work which mingles dangerous er- 
rors along with the great truths it contains. However, it 
remains one of the most considerable monuments of the eight- 
eenth century, and in it is explained definitely the true prin- 
ciple of political sovereignty. It has great celebrity, and — 
more or less thoroughly understood — it inspired the majority 
of political doctrines during the French Revolution. It has 
been said that " in Beaumarchais's Figaro one heard the noise 
of the tumbling walls of the Bastille, and in Rousseau's 
Contrat social, the fall of the guillotine. ' ' It was the founda- 
tion of the politics of the Jacobins that led to the Reign of 
Terror with Robespierre at its head. " Qui s 'oppose a la 
volonte generale doit y etre contraint par tout le corps, ce 
qui ne signifie autre chose sinon qu'on le force d'etre libre ": 
in other words, political and religious liberty must be sacri- 
ficed to the general will (volonte generale). 

In the Contrat social, Rousseau also declares himself 
against the free press. " Let us return to nature " is the 
principle of the book. Voltaire said after reading it : " Never 
has any one applied so much genius in order to make beasts 
of us. One fairly feels the desire to walk on all fours. " 
Rousseau, to exemplify his writings, reformed his life even 
as to his costume. Discarding his sword and his lace cuffs, 
he became " citizen of Geneva, man of nature, enemy of 
social conventions." 

Rousseau's Emile, on de V education is a treatise on educa- 
tion which in many pages bears the marks of a philosophical 
novel. It begins with the birth of the child: the author 
would have the mother herself take care, for the first few 
years of its life, of this being that owes her its existence. 
The principle expressed in the first sentence sounds the key- 
note of the whole book: " All that issues from the hands of 
the Author of Nature is good, all that is in the hands of men 

322 



ROUSSEAU 

is degenerated ; and, the education given by society being bad, 
it is time to establish a negative education as the best, or 
rather the only good one." Entile was the foundation of 
modern pedagogy. The first four books of this work are 
devoted to the education of the two sexes in general, then to 
that of Emile in particular; the fifth is given over to the 
education of woman, and to Sophie, who has been chosen 
as the wife of Emile. In the fourth book, the famous Pro- 
fession de foi du vicaire Savoyard, depicts the religious belief 
of Rousseau himself, and attacks materialism as well as ortho- 
doxy. A French critic says that Rousseau is more dangerous 
than Voltaire and the Encyclopedists; the latter at once ex- 
cite indignation, but Rousseau, by his affectionate and senti- 
mental Deism deceives the religious and sophisticates the 
moral feeling by substituting vague thoughts for the positive 
idea of duty. The work as a whole is full of fine and delicate 
observations and excellent advice; the meeting of two young 
people and the awakening of their sentiments are the occa- 
sions of naive and charming scenes. It closes with the mar- 
riage of Emile and Sophie. Later, Rousseau continued the 
story of Emile, who becomes counselor for the Bey in Algiers ; 
but it came to no conclusion. The book had a salutary influ- 
ence on the mode of education for children, which at that 
time was false. The great apostle of education, Pestalozzi, 
grew up in the atmosphere of Rousseau's teachings, and ap- 
plied in practice his theories. Goethe called Emile the 
* ' Naturevangelium der Erziehung. ' ' x 

Rousseau composed Emile at the " Ermitage," at the en- 
trance of the forest of Montmorency, which Madame d'Epinay 
had offered him, where he spent five years copying music for 
a living. He closed his doors to all the world, even to his 
old friends of Paris: Voltaire, Baron Grimm, Diderot, and 
d'Holbach. A quarrel with Madame d'Epinay made the fur- 
ther occupation of the " Ermitage " impossible and he ac- 
cepted the offer of the Duke of Luxembourg, who placed the 
chateau of Montlouis at his disposal. Rousseau's Lettre a 
d'Alembert sur les spectacles was his dismissal from the En- 
cyclopedists and his declaration of war against the whole 

1 Nature-gospel of Education. 
323 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

party. The first book which solitude inspired him to write 
was the celebrated epistolary novel, Julie, ou la Nouvelle 
Helo'ise. It recalls the love of Helo'ise and Abelard, and is 
concerned with the affections and the lives of two young peo- 
ple, Julie and Saint-Preux. The scene is laid in Clarens, on 
Lake Geneva. Rousseau has taken Richardson's " Clarissa " 
as his model for this story, but Julie in turn served as a model 
for Goethe's Werther. Rousseau himself passes a judgment 
on this book in his preface: " Ce livre n'est point fait pour 
circuler dans le monde; il convient a tres peu de lecteurs. 
Toute fille qui aura lu une page de ce livre est une fille 
perdue." * Vinet says : " Ni l'eclat du style ni les admirables 
descriptions de la nature ne pourront jamais racheter l'im- 
moralite de cet ouvrage qu'il est prudent et sage de ne jamais 
ouvrir, comme l'auteur lui meme d'ailleurs nous le conseille." 2 
The novel had, however, an unheard-of success. Love spoke 
a language unknown to the eighteenth century and to modern 
literature. All hearts were profoundly affected; all women 
were henceforth on the side of Rousseau. In the other novels 
of the time, women were capricious and charming beings, not 
to be taken seriously. Rousseau, on the contrary, placed them 
on a pedestal, and showed them as always superior to men. 
For three quarters of a century he remained their favorite 
author. 

A French critic writes: " In his Essay on the Origin of 
Languages, instead of condemning society, as he had done in 
his Discours, Rousseau seeks its origin, and pictures its begin- 
nings with marvelous divination. He shows that at the outset, 
words, poetry, music, and the expression of the feelings and 
of ideas and forms by gesture, were one. Primitive languages 
were sung, and gestures gave birth to the art of design and 
sculpture. Rousseau continued to express in this book, his 
preference for the poetic existence of pastoral tribes in the 
ancient Orient to modern civilization ; but he no longer spoke 

1 "This book is not made to circulate in the world; it is suitable for 
very few readers. Any girl who has read a page of this book is a ruined 
girl. 

2 Neither the brilliancy of style nor the admirable descriptions of nature 
could ever redeem the immorality of this work, which it would be prudent 
never to open, as indeed the author warns us." 

324 



ROUSSEAU 

of savage life, which is only animal life, beyond which man is 
naturally drawn by the principle of perfectibility that re- 
sides in him, as Rousseau recognizes. ' ' 

After it mile, persecution burst upon Rousseau. Royalty 
and clergy felt themselves touched to the quick. The Pro- 
fession de foi du vicaire Savoyard (one of the most remarkable 
episodes of Emile, in which Rousseau sought to prove the 
necessity of a completely personal religion) was strongly 
criticised by the Catholic clergy as well as by Protestant 
pastors. Rousseau replied to these criticisms with a letter 
entitled, Jean-Jacques Rousseau a Christophe de Beaumont 
(Archbishop of Paris). Faithful to the device which he had 
adopted — Vitam impendere vero (sacrifice your life to truth), 
he did not hide himself under false names, but signed every- 
thing that he wrote. Emile was denounced by the parliament 
of Paris, by the Sorbonne, and by the archbishop, and was 
ordered to be burned by the hangman. A warrant of arrest 
was issued against him; but certain great personages facil- 
itated his escape. Those who were charged with his arrest 
saluted him, and smiled when he left his house; and were 
content to report that when they had presented themselves 
at his home he was no longer there. Rousseau retired to 
Switzerland, where he found refuge in the village of Motiers- 
Travers near Neuchatel, and a friendly welcome from Marshal 
George Keith, the governor of the province. Here he wrote 
the political pamphlet Lettres de la Montague, a masterpiece 
of dialectics and fine irony in answer to Tronchin's Lettres 
de la Campagne. The intrigues of his enemies aroused some 
of the fanatic peasants to attack his house, and Rousseau was 
driven from the village. The same proscription awaited him 
everywhere. Forced to abandon his sojourn in the little isle 
of Saint-Pierre, in the middle of the Lake of Bienne (im- 
mortalized by his delightful sketch of it), whither he had 
retired to avoid the annoyances imposed on him in the village, 
he was about to accept an invitation from Frederick II of 
Prussia, but yielded to David Hume 's urgent invitation to live 
in England. He was most kindly received by George III, 
who gave him a pension, and Hume established him in the 
County of Derby. Unfortunately, Rousseau, always distrust- 
ful, quarreled with the great Englishman, and left his place 

325 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

of retirement very suddenly. He then returned to France, 
where he was received with enthusiasm. The Prince of Conti 
established him in a residence at Trie-le-Chateau ; but again 
his morbid susceptibilities got the better of him, and he re- 
mained there only two months. Thence he went to Lyons, 
to Grenoble, to Chambery, finally to Paris — his misanthropy 
increasing the while. Without having entirely renounced the 
world, he resolved not to write any more. However, he took 
up the pen again to work out a book unfortunately only too 
celebrated — the Confessions (1766-1770), an autobiography 
in which, with infinite literary art, he said of himself, in all 
sincerity, everything good and everything evil that can be 
said, revealing his most secret faults as well as his inmost 
thoughts. The Confessions is not an edifying book. In it 
Rousseau avows with unabashed frankness all his faults, as 
the only expiation which he could impose upon himself. He 
says, " J'ai ete puni ou j'ai peche "; but he writes without 
humility, in fact with defiance, as the very beginning of the 
book shows : ' ' May the trumpet sound the last judgment day 
when it will, and I shall then appear with this book in my 
hands to present myself before the Almighty Judge. I shall 
say loudly : ' This is what I have done, this is what I thought, 
this is what I was. . . . Eternal Being, gather about me the 
numberless throng of my fellow creatures ... let anyone 
of these dare say : ' ' I was better than this man. " ' ' 

Rousseau's cynical pride is monumental, but as to style the 
work is admirable. How many pages are replete with fresh- 
ness ; what heartiness of description in all his youthful adven- 
tures, in his walks in which he is so well able to transmit to us 
his passionate love of nature ! This work was begun in Eng- 
land, at the time when his mind was already disturbed; but 
his sinister visions of the present did not obscure the charm of 
his reminiscences. Seized with that sad affection, both moral 
and physical, which is called hypochondria, or the black 
sickness, and magnifying to himself the enmities which he 
had incurred by his double war against priests and atheists, 
he imagined himself to be the object of universal hatred, 
and put no faith in the sincere sympathy and homage that 
people were ready to accord him. His state of mind, 
aggravated by sad infirmities, made his last years quite pain- 

326 



ROUSSEAU 

ful, but with his genius always brilliant, he wrote the painful 
dialogues of Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques, and his Reveries 
du promeneur solitaire (1777-1778). Having lived since his 
return to Paris for eight years in a humble dwelling, he finally 
accepted from a friend, M. de Girardin, a refuge more in con- 
formity with his tastes than the tumultuous streets of Paris 
— a refuge in a beautiful part of the country, at Ermenon- 
ville. A month later he died (1778), without anyone being 
able to determine whether his death was accidental or de- 
liberate suicide. 

Rousseau worked a revolution in literature and morals. 
The licentious superficiality which, until then, had char- 
acterized writers, disappeared entirely; men began to extol 
virtue, the countryside, nature, love of country, and of 
humanity; woman again won respect, and family life was 
again in a position of honor. Voltaire himself, who violently 
attacked this " barbarian of eloquence/' as he called him, 
attributed to the influence of the Genevese philosopher the 
renewal of his own talent. From Rousseau proceeded Roman- 
ticism; he introduced new qualities into literature; for the 
spirit of analysis he substituted love and the cult of nature, 
passionate eloquence and personal exaltation; also, he laid 
bare that lamentable vein of melancholy and restlessness 
called in the nineteenth century, mat du siecle. No writer 
of the eighteenth century has attained that poetic sublimity 
compounded with falseness and destructiveness. No one 
helped so much to emancipate the human mind from the 
shackles of despotism; but neither has anyone contributed 
more to the destruction of the fundamental idea of true 
liberty. In politics he undermined the ancient institutions, 
and gave the coup de grace to royalty by popularizing 
republican ideas. In religion he rejected all revealed author- 
ity, but defended the dogmas of the existence of God and 
the immortality of the soul, and was an adversary of atheism 
and materialism. Unfortunately his life was a tangle of in- 
consistencies, as his works were a tangle of paradoxes and 
sophisms. A whole school of writers depends from Rousseau 
— among them: Bernardin de St. Pierre, Madame de Stael, 
Chateaubriand. Lamartine, George Sand. 

327 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS 

One of the greatest literary enterprises of the eighteenth 
century was the famous French Encyclopedic The incentive 
to this work originated in a French translation of Chambers's 
Cyclopaedia, 1 by John Mills and Gottfried Sellins, both resi- 
dents of Paris. Jean Paul de Gua de Malves, professor of 
philosophy in the College of France, was engaged as editor 
to correct errors and add new discoveries, but owing to some 
dispute he withdrew and the publisher offered the task to 
Diderot, who persuaded the editor to undertake an original and 
more comprehensive work. 

In 1740 was granted the royal privilege for the Encyclo- 
pedic which began to appear in 1751 under the title of 
Encyclopedic, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts 
des metiers, par une societe de gens de lettres. (Methodical 
Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Trades, by a Society of 
Men of Letters. ) The first edition numbered 4,250 copies which 
were quickly sold. It was a scientific monument that con- 
tained a history of philosophy, and the technical description 
of all the arts and occupations practiced in France at this 
time. It was also an instrument of war. All the innovators 
and free thinkers who wished to modify society from a reli- 
gious or political standpoint united to work out new theories 
and destroy beliefs of the past. It became identified with 
the philosophic movement of the time, and the term Encyclo- 
pediste became recognized as designating a certain form of 
philosophy. The " Preliminary Discourse/ ' written by 
d'Alembert is an admirable synthetic picture of human 

1 The most ancient encyclopedia extant is the Natural History in 
thirty-seven books by Pliny, first century after Christ. 

328 



THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS 

knowledge, and constitutes one of the chief philosophical 
works of the eighteenth century. D'Alembert also wrote the 
treatises on Mathematics. Voltaire, Montesquieu, Buffon, and 
Kousseau who took music and philosophy for his theme, all 
contributed largely to the Encyclopedic during a period of 
ten years. Mallet wrote on theology and history, Yvon on 
logic and ethics. Daubenton furnished articles on natural 
history, Marmontel on literary subjects; the Abbe Bergier 
treated theology ; the classification of the sciences was provided 
by the Englishman, Bacon. Louis wrote on surgery, Eidons 
on heraldry and art, Toussaint on jurisprudence, La Con- 
damine on South America, Turgot on economics. These men, 
together with other contributors — Condillac, Helvetius, d 'Hol- 
bach, Baron Grimm, Volney — were known as the Encyclo- 
pedists. Diderot performed a giant's work; besides assigning 
to himself the subject of ancient philosophy, he superintended 
everything, including the corrections and the engravings, and 
wrote numerous articles on the arts and trades. No writer 
knew the processes of the mechanical arts; so Diderot took 
this task upon himself. He went among the workshops, seeking 
explanations, examining the working of machines, and even 
going to work himself in order to feel assured that he had 
understood perfectly; then, returning home, he would write 
down what he had observed. Besides all this, he was ever 
ready to help with his facile pen his numerous friends, and 
thus much of what they did is due to him. 

The Encyclopedic was the object of the most violent per- 
secution by the church and government, and its publication 
was in turn permitted and forbidden. In 1749 Diderot was 
imprisoned at Vincennes for a short time. After his release 
the work continued; but in 1759 the privilege was again re- 
voked, and d'Alembert retired in the face of all these dif- 
ficulties. In 1765 the printer, Lebreton, was put into the 
Bastille, and a royal order was sent to the subscribers to 
deliver their copies to the agents of the police. Owing to the 
protection of Madame de Pompadour, of the bookseller, of 
Lamoignon de Malesherbe, Quesnay, and of the Prefect of 
police de Sartines, the Encyclopedia continued publication. 
Voltaire relates that at a supper of the king's at the Trianon, 
there arose a debate on the composition of gunpowder, and 

329 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Madame de Pompadour said she did not know how her rouge 
or her silk stockings were made. The Due de La Valliere 
regretted that the king had confiscated the encyclopedias as 
they would have furnished the required information and 
settled the dispute. The king sent for a copy, and three 
servants with difficulty brought in twenty-one volumes. The 
required information was found, and the king allowed all 
the confiscated copies to be returned. The Encyclopedia also 
suffered atrocious mutilation at the hands of the printer, 
Lebreton. Grimm tells us that in printing the last ten 
volumes, Lebreton had the articles set in type just as the 
authors sent them in, and when Diderot had corrected the 
last proof of each sheet, the printer secretly cut out whatever 
seemed to him daring or likely to give offense, burning the 
manuscript as he proceeded. Most of the best articles were 
ruined, and Diderot only accidentally discovered this fraud 
in referring to one of his back articles. 

The Encyclopedie was not constructed on a regular plan; 
many of the articles are excellent and some are inferior and 
faulty, but it was an interesting and comprehensive work of 
great political importance, and held a conspicuous place in the 
civil and literary history of the century. 

THE PHYSIOCRATES 

Francois Quesnay was the principal founder of political 
economy, and the chief of the school of physiocrats (econo- 
mists) , a group of French philosophers and political economists 
who achieved great prominence in the latter part of the 
eighteenth century. The Physiocrates considered the cultiva- 
tion of the land as the chief source of national wealth. Ac- 
cording to Quesnay there are certain economic laws to which 
the legislator must adapt himself. All autocratic interference 
with the laws of production and exchange is detrimental, 
hence the famous maxim of de Gournay : Laissez f aire, laissez 
passer. Quesnay published his ideas on economics in the 
Encyclopedie in 1756. The name Physiocracy (from the 
Greek " supremacy of nature ") was first given to the doctrine 
in 1767 by Dupont de Nemours. 

Physiocracy was defended by the Marquis de Mirabeau 

330 



THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS 

(the elder) , Dupont de Nemours, Mercier de la Riviere. The 
greatest man inspired by these principles was Anne-Robert- 
Jacques Turgot, Baron de L'Aulne who not only aided in a 
literary way in his Reflexions sur la formation et la distribu- 
tion des Richesses, but also practically worked for this system. 
Brunetiere notes the difference between the encyclopedists 
and the economists : * * the encyclopedists are theorists and 
rationalists; the economists, empiricists or utilitarians. ' ' 

DIDEROT 

Denis Diderot (1713-1784), the son of a cutler of Langres 
— a philosopher, an author of inexhaustible fertility, endowed 
with a brilliant imagination and an incredible capacity for 
work — is perhaps the most powerful genius, the most marked 
personality of his time, and the man who best sums up the 
philosophic aspirations of the eighteenth century. It is, how- 
ever, only lately, with the appearance of a complete edition 
of his works by Assezat, that Diderot 's genius has been fully 
recognized. Born and reared a Catholic, his writings show 
at various stages his gradual change from Orthodoxy to Ma- 
terialism. In his Essai sur la verite et la vertu (1745), he 
attacks atheism; his Pensees philosophiques (1748) show him 
a deist without fixed religious belief; and in his Lettre sur les 
Aveugles he is a decided materialist. In the latter work he 
forestalls Darwin's principles of evolution and of the survival 
of the fittest. His stories Les Bijoux indiscrets, La Religieuse, 
have been much censured, but they were written during the 
reign of the reprobate Louis XV. The novel Jacques le 
Fataliste, an imitation of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, was 
taken by Sardou as a model for his thrilling play, Fernande. 
Le neveu de Rameau became known to Germany before it was 
read in France, owing to its translation by Goethe, who had a 
copy of the original manuscript. The German translation was 
in turn translated into French before the edition from the 
original manuscript appeared some eighteen years later. 

Diderot created artistic criticism by his famous Salons 
(1765-67), written in response to the request of Baron 
Grimm that he write some lines for a manuscript journal, 
that was being sent to Germanw, concerning pictures ex- 

331 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

hibited every year in Paris. It is in his Conies especially 
that Diderot exhibits great power. Here we find, among other 
little stories told in a charming manner, the original on which 
Krylov (the Russian La Fontaine) drew for his fable, " The 
Ass and the Nightingale." Two pathetic tales are Les deux 
amis de Bourbonne, and L'Histoire de Mademoiselle de La 
Chaux et du docteur Gardeil. 

It is said that Diderot, in order to help a poor young 
writer, once wrote a satire directed against himself and 
addressed to the Due d 'Orleans, who hated him; and thereby 
gained for the indigent author the duke's approval and a 
substantial sum of money. Some of his critical essays are 
fascinating, though lavish and superlative in praise, and of 
annihilating severity in censure. In this genre he occupied 
the place in France that Lessing held in Germany. Among 
his best essays are : Reflexions sur les femmes; Regrets sur ma 
vieille robe de chambre; Eloge de Richardson (his favorite 
author). Of women he says: " Quand on veut ecrire sur les 
femmes, il faut tremper sa plume dans l'arc-en-ciel et secouer 
sur sa 1 igne la poussiere des ailes du papillon. ' ' 1 Diderot 
was a very versatile writer ; his works embrace novels, dramas, 
critiques, history, philosophy, scientific works, and an ex- 
tremely interesting correspondence. One of the most valuable 
documents of the social life of the eighteenth century is his 
correspondence, during twenty years, with Mademoiselle 
Voland. His dramas, Le fils naturel, after Goldoni's comedy 
II vero amico, and Le pere de famille f are his weakest produc- 
tions; but though these plays left no impression in France, 
they were the inspiration for the " tearful comedies " (come- 
dies larmoy antes) cultivated in Germany by Kotzebue, Iffland, 
and Sehroeder. Diderot possessed the power of depicting the 
extraordinary, along with a rare sense of living reality, and a 
remarkable ability for portraying the true family life of the 
people. In these respects he greatly influenced Lessing, who 
acknowledged the indebtedness and made it clear in his 
dramas, Emilia Galotti and Miss Sara Sampson. 

Diderot once appeared in St. Petersburg, at the invitation 

1 " When one wishes to write about women he must dip his pen in the 
rainbow and sand his line with the down from the wings of the butterfly." 

332 



THE ENCYCLOPEDISTS 

of Empress Catherine; and philosopher and empress were 
mutually charmed. Later, knowing that Diderot was in need, 
the empress bought his library, and gave him an annual 
pension for taking care of it. 

Jean-le-Rond D'Alembert (1717-83), the assiduous col- 
laborator and friend of Diderot, had nothing of his confrere's 
fiery character ; he was of quite the opposite nature. D 'Alem- 
bert was found when a child under the steps of the church of 
Jean-le-Rond near Notre-Dame, in Paris; and was therefore 
christened Jean-le-Rond. As he was puny, the police, instead 
of putting him in the asylum for foundlings, turned him over 
to be cared for by the wife of a glazier in the neighborhood. 
It transpired later that his mother was Madame de Tencin, 
the author of several esteemed novels. Meanwhile, the assist- 
ance which the glazier secretly received enabled him to give 
the child a good education ; and the grateful boy, on becoming 
a man, continued to live with his foster parents, even when 
he had achieved fame. After he had achieved celebrity, his 
mother, Madame de Tencin, made herself known to him, and 
wished to have him with her ; but the young philosopher, little 
touched by this tardy recognition, did not hesitate a moment 
in answering : " Madame, my real mother is the glazier's wife. 
I know no other." D'Alembert 's talents and character won 
for him a high place among the writers of his time. Enjoying 
a merited consideration, and attaining an honest and sufficient 
fortune, he saw, gathered in his drawing-room, the most dis- 
tinguished politicians, soldiers, writers, of whom Paris could 
boast. His reputation, however, was due less to his achieve- 
ments as a man of letters than to his scholarship, and to his 
prowess in the mathematical sciences, of which he made a 
specialty, and to which he contributed important discoveries. 
Besides his share in the Encyclopedic, d'Alembert wrote the 
Elements de Philosophic, in four volumes, and the Eloges of 
the scholars whom he had survived — eulogies rich in curious 
anecdotes well told. A man of wisdom, of moderate ambitions, 
he declined the tutorship of Paul, son of Catherine II — to 
which was attached a pension of one hundred thousand livres ; 
he refused the presidency of the Academy of Sciences at 
Berlin, proffered by Frederick II — content with the honors 
afforded him by the French Academy and by the Academie 

333 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

des Sciences, of which he was life secretary. His numerous 
letters to Voltaire, of which a part are found in Voltaire's 
published correspondence, do the greatest honor to his in- 
telligence, his character, and his pen. 

Frederic Melchior, baron de Grimm (1723-1807), a French 
writer and critic of German origin, was a collaborator of Di- 
derot, and friend of all the great French writers during his 
long residence in Paris. His Correspondance litteraire, philo- 
sophique et critique written in French comprises seventeen 
volumes * and covers the period from 1753 to 1790. At first 
this correspondence was in the form of bulletins addressed to 
the Duchess of Saxony-Gotha, who wished information as to 
the literary works of the French. Many of the letters were 
also sent to the Empress of Russia, the Queen of Sweden, to 
the King of Prussia, and to the King of Poland. Later the 
correspondence became a great collection, and some other 
writers contributed, principally Diderot with his Salons. It 
moreover became the organ of the Encyclopedists for the for- 
eign monarchs ; it included excellent sketches of the literature 
of art, of music, of the authors, actors, and celebrities of the 
court, and proved an inexhaustible treasure of anecdotes and 
criticisms on these themes. 

Marie- Jean- Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condor cet 
(1743-94), was an Encyclopedist and the organizer of the 
French system of public instruction. His writings included 
scientific, economical, political works, eulogies, sketches, mem- 
oirs, and correspondence. During the Revolution he was an 
enthusiastic Girondist. After the fall of his party, he found 
refuge during eight months in the house of a friend where he 
wrote many of his works, the most important of which is his 
Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progres de V esprit 
humain (1794). finally arrested, Condorcet poisoned himself 
in his prison. 

1 Best edition by Maurice Tourneux, 1882. 



CHAPTER XXII 



a 



TRAGEDY, COMEDY, TEARFUL " DRAMA, POETRY, THE NOVEL 

After Voltaire tragedy languished, surviving only in 
feeble imitations until the genre exhausted itself and the 
drama took its place. Nevertheless, for many years the poets 
who essayed tragedy were as numerous as they were mediocre. 
As for comedy — a new school proceeding from Diderot broke 
away from the classic model and counted many disciples: 
Sedaine, Mercier, Lemercier, D'Arnaud, Beaumarchais, and 
others who prepared the way for the gloomy melodrama 
of Caigniez, Du Cange and Pixereeourt followed by the great 
romantic movement. 

Michel Jean Sedaine (1719-97), life secretary of the 
Eoyal Academy of Architecture, was one of the most modest 
and charming of men. Illiterate, and absolutely incapable of 
drawing his works from a source other than himself, Voltaire 
said to him: " Then it is you, Monsieur, who never borrow 
from anyone? " (( I am no richer than if I had done so," 
answered Sedaine. 

Michel Jean Sedaine x contributed two pretty comedies to 
the Theatre-Francais — La Gageure imprevue and Le Philoso- 
phe sans le savoir. George Sand wrote a sequel to his comedy 
Le Philosophe sans le savoir, with the title, Le Manage de 
Victorine. Sedaine wrote many comic operas — among them, 
Aucassin et Nicolette and Richard Cozur de Lion, in which 
occurs the famous couplet: 

Richard! O mon roi! 
L'univers t'abandonne; 
Sur la terre il n'est que moi 

1 Alfred de Vigny introduced him into one of his prettiest conies: La 
Veillee de Vincennes. 

335 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Qui m'inteVesse a ta personne. 
Je voudrais briser tes fers, 
Et tout le reste t'abandonne. 1 

This was the favorite song of the royalists during the 
imprisonment of Louis XVI ; and it cost many an imprudent 
singer his head. 

Louis-Sebastien Mercier's comedies depicted modern society 
and the people. His Deserteur earned for him the protection 
of Marie-Antoinette and a pension. In his Essai sur Vart 
dramatique he declared war against the classics and continued 
with a bitter criticism of them in his Mon Bonnet de Nuit. 

Louis-Jean Nepomucene Lemercier at the age of seventeen 
became a literary- celebrity with the representation of his 
tragedy Meleagre at the Theatre-Frangais. His comedy Pinto 
was the first French historical comedy. 

Francois Thomas Marie de Baculard D'Arnaud wrote 
four plays, only one of which was produced. He was the 
author of many poems, novels, and sacred odes, one of which 
the Lamentations de Jeremie called forth a satirical quatrain 
of Voltaire : 

Savez-vous pourquoi Jeremie 

A tant pleure pendant sa vie? 

C'est qu'en prophete il prevoyait 

Que Baculard le traduirait. 2 

Pierre Augustin Caron (better known as Beaumarchais), 
born at Paris in 1732 (died in 1799), was not only a writer; he 
combined, as he says himself, the love of letters with that of 
affairs — manufacturing supplies and making plays, prosecut- 
ing lawsuits and diplomacy, all at the same time. The son of a 
watchmaker, he practiced for a time the calling of his father, 
and even invented an improvement in the mechanism of 
watches. As a musician, his proficiency on the harp, and his 

1 O Richard, O my king! The world abandons thee; on earth I alone 
am interested in thy welfare. I would break thy chains — all the rest 
abandoning thee. 

2 Do you know why Jeremiah 
Wept so much during his lifetime? 
It is because, being a prophet, he foresaw 
That Baculard would translate him. 

336 



TRAGEDY, COMEDY, POETRY AND THE NOVEL 

beautiful voice caused him to be called upon to give lessons 
to the sisters of Louis XV, who appointed him leader of their 
little concerts at court. He also ingratiated himself with 
the great banker and financier, Paris Duverney, who had 
founded a military school and had made many unsuccessful 
attempts to obtain royal approval of it by a visit from the 
king. Caron, with the aid of the princesses, prevailed upon 
the king to visit the school, and Duverney, in gratitude, al- 
lowed his intercessor to share in several large ventures that 
brought him immense wealth. Caron, moreover, married a 
rich woman, and soon added the name Beaumarchais (the 
title of one of his wife's estates) to his own, prefixing a de 
which he bought for a round sum. " I am a noble," he said, 
" for I have the receipt for it." 

The acquisition of his title excited some ridicule, but he 
warded off all insults by his prowess as a duelist and his 
bitter satire. Beaumarchais 's brilliant talents and his great 
pecuniary success made him the object of much envy. One 
day, splendidly attired, he was on his way to court in Ver- 
sailles, when a courtier approached him with a sarcastic allu- 
sion to his father 's trade : * ' Ah, Monsieur de Beaumarchais, 
how fortunate I am to meet you! Will you kindly examine 
my watch? It seems to be wrong." " Willingly," replied 
Beaumarchais, " but I must warn you that I am very awk- 
ward." The courtier, still persisting, Beaumarchais took the 
timepiece and let it fall. " Ah, Monsieur, a thousand par- 
dons, but I have warned you, and it is you who have wished 
it ! "he said, leaving the angry courtier to pick up his watch. 

After Duverney 's death, Beaumarchais became involved 
in a lawsuit with the heirs of the banker 's estate, who did not 
recognize his claim to fifteen thousand francs Duverney had 
left him. He won the case in the preliminary trial court, 
but at the second hearing he lost it. He then appealed to 
public opinion (which he introduced into French life as a 
new power) through the medium of four Memoir -es, in which 
he relentlessly exposed the corruption of the law courts. It 
was this that suddenly earned him the reputation of a writer. 
At that time it was a custom, and often a necessity, to go to 
see one's judges. Beaumarchais had in vain presented himself 
several times at the house of M. Goezman,, who was to make 
S3 337 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the report of his case. He was told that if a certain sum of 
money were sent to Madame Goezman, an audience would be 
immediately accorded him; the lady would, moreover, promise 
to return the money if Beaumarchais lost his case. The case 
was lost, and the money was returned, with the exception of 
fifteen gold louis, which Madame Goezman maintained had 
been given to the secretary, and the secretary declared he had 
not received. Beaumarchais pressed his claim to the fifteen 
louis ; the lady refused to give them up. M. Goezman then 
accused Beaumarchais of having wanted to bribe him. So 
Beaumarchais wrote the Memoir es to defend himself; and his 
opponents answered in kind, by way of accusation. Judiciary 
notes were always printed, but were not ordinarily sold. 
Beaumarchais put his on sale ; they were eagerly bought, and 
soon the whole of France was talking of the affair. Humor- 
ous scenes, pleasant repartee, wit — not always in the best of 
taste, but which covered his adversaries with ridicule — an in- 
exhaustible gayety, a penetrating and irresistible logic — all this 
characterizes the Memoires. With this weapon he fought, as 
Voltaire said, a dozen persons at once. His ridicule of the 
parliament made all Europe stare, contributing much to dis- 
credit monarchy and the ancient institutions, and to pre- 
cipitate the Revolution. 

In 1764, he made a journey to Spain to avenge himself 
on the rascal Clavijo, a writer of Madrid, who was engaged 
to wed his sister, but who left her shamefully on the eve of her 
marriage. Beaumarchais was successful in depriving Clavijo 
of his honors and his post, and in having him banished from 
court. He describes all this in his Memoires, and so dramat- 
ically and so well that Goethe took from this source entire 
scenes for his own Clavijo. 

Beaumarchais had also busied himself in Spain with the 
collection of popular melodies; and in order to utilize them 
he composed a comic opera, Le Barbier de Seville. The opera 
was refused, so he made a comedy of it, which became the 
first part of his trilogy on Figaro x — the two other parts being 

1 The words of Figaro: " Je me presse de rire de tout de peur d'etre 
oblige" d'en pleurer" ("I hasten to laugh at everything lest I be obliged 
to weep over it"), were taken by the journal, Le Figaro, as its motto. 

338 



TRAGEDY, COMEDY, POETRY AND THE NOVEL 

Le Mariage de Figaro, on la folle journee and La mere 
coupable, ou V autre Tartufe, a play of the " tearful " 
kind, greatly inferior to the preceding two. The characters 
of the three plays are the same. Figaro is first presented 
as a barber who has been, in turn, a physician, a poet, and a 
journalist. Engaged in business, he wrote couplets, worked 
on political economy, and pieces for the theater. Fortune 
betrayed him; but this did not prevent him from waxing 
round and fat, in spite of misery, or from preserving a gayety 
under every trial, and an activity which embroiled him in 
intrigues and enterprises of all sorts. Nevertheless, his prob- 
ity remained intact, though he had a bad reputation. In the 
Barbier de Seville, the masterpiece of the French comedy of 
the eighteenth century, Figaro brought about the marriage 
of Rosina to Count Alma viva and attached himself to the 
count's service. This play is a perfect type of the comedy 
of intrigue, a masterpiece of satiric malice and grace. It 
was used by Rossini and Paisiello in their operas, II Barbieri 
de Siviglia. In the second piece, Le Mariage de Figaro — the 
most audacious of the trilogy — the hero defends his fiancee 
against this same count, who wishes to take her from him. 
It is in this play that Brid'oison figures — the judge who sings 
the final couplet ending with this line: " Tout finit par des 
chansons " (" everything ends in song "), which has become 
traditional. In the third play of this trilogy, La mere cou- 
pable, Figaro reconciles the countess with the count, who has 
grown old, and unmasks a knave to whom Beaumarchais has 
given the ill-disguised name of a lawyer, one Bergasse, who 
in a lawsuit had pleaded against him with scornful emphasis. 
The libretto of the little two-act opera, Les Noces de Figaro, 
by Lorenzo Da Ponte, is borrowed from the Mariage de Figaro 
of Beaumarchais ; the music, by Mozart, is an operatic master- 
piece. 

In the Mariage de Figaro, the old government, the old 
society, the clergy, nobility, magistracy, are given over to 
the ridicule of all in a series of scenes sparkling with gayety ; 
we can feel the breath of revolution in every line. Louis XVI 
was not mistaken ; when they sent him the manuscript he de- 
clared that he would never permit the piece to be played; 
that nothing less than the destruction of the Bastille would 

339 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

make the representation of it consistent. But the queen and 
all the court intervened, sportively applying to the king the 
phrase in the monologue of the play: " II n'y que les petits 
homines qui aient peur des petits ecrits 1 ; " and after a delay 
of four years the play was performed to the frenzied applause 
of the people. A few years later the Revolution destroyed 
irrevocably what Figaro had criticised. 

Beaumarchais summed up in his comedies all the genres 
of his predecessors, the Italians, the Spanish, Moliere, Le 
Sage, Diderot, Regnard, Marivaux, to which he added his 
personal qualities and the particular aspect of the life of his 
epoch. Written in a brilliant style, his comedies excelled in 
gayety and wit, and he became the great playwright of this 
period, although he ignored almost entirely the rules of the 
classicists, rejected Alexandrines, and introduced prose on 
the stage, much to the astonishment and wrath of the critics. 
Voltaire was jealous of him, and at the same time admired 
him, saying, apropos of the Memoires: " What a man! he 
includes everything: pleasantry, seriousness, reason, gayety, 
force, pathos, all the kinds of eloquence in style ; and he finds 
them all without effort." 

" No one," says Jules Lemaitre, " has ever analyzed and 
expressed with more delicacy, the most subtle questions of 
vanity and love than Marivaux. Liove — not violent, but 
charming and coquettish in an artificial world.' ' Pierre 
Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763) was a dra- 
matic author and novelist. His style was such, that it has en- 
riched the language with a new word: in French, marivau- 
dage is used to express a somewhat affected manner that is, 
nevertheless, not displeasing, and, if sometimes a little tedious, 
by no means ridiculous. Marivaux composed a great number 
of pieces characterized by an accurate and delicate psychology. 
Among them are: Le jeu de V amour et du hasard; Le Legs; 
Les fausses confidences; La surprise de V amour; L'Epreuve; 
L'Ecole des meres; Arlequin poli par l' amour. His best 
novels are Vie de Marianne and the Paysan parvenu. The 
prettiest of his acted nouvelles is Le jeu de V amour et du 
hasard. A young girl in the country awaits her betrothed who 

1 "It is only little men who fear little writings." 
340 



TRAGEDY, COMEDY, POETRY AND THE NOVEL 

is to be presented to her; in order to know him better, she 
assumes the role and costume of her maid, while the maid, 
in her turn, plays the mistress. By a strange coincidence, 
the betrothed is possessed with the same queer fancy, and ar- 
rives at the chateau under the name and in the costume of his 
valet, while the valet plays the role of the master. The fiancee 
is astonished and disappointed at finding the servant so much 
more interesting than his lord, who, in the end, as might be 
supposed, offers his heart and his hand to the pseudo-maid. 
During these combats of love, the father and brother of the 
girl, who are in the secret, play tricks on the young people. 
The whole forms a very pretty little picture which, although 
set in dreamland, appears quite natural. 

Philippe Nericault, called Destouches (1680-1754), fol- 
lowed the classic rules in twenty-seven comedies, the best of 
which are Le Pkilosophe marie, ou Le Mari honteux de Vetre, 
and Le Glorieux, his masterpiece. 

Pierre Claude Nivelle de La Chaussee (1692-1754) is the 
creator of the comedie larmoyante (tearful drama), a name 
given, says a French critic, not without malice. Le Prejuge a 
la mode, I'Ecole des Meres, and Melanide, considered his mas- 
terpiece, are among the twenty-nine of his plays belonging to 
this new genre, which combines the comic and the tragic, and 
is based on sympathy for unfortunate humanity. 

While Marivaux, Destouches and La Chaussee portrayed 
life among the middle classes, the Abbe Antoine Prevost 
d 'Exiles (1697-1765) depicts the frivolous and immoral nobil- 
ity. In his Memoir es d'nn homme de qualite retire du monde 
he describes his own restless life. The Memoires include his 
masterpiece, Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon 
Lescaut, afterwards published separately. This affecting tale 
relates the love of the young nobleman, Des Grieux, for the 
lowborn and faithless Manon Lescaut, whom he follows to 
America in the face of poverty and suffering. The story, 
under the title of Manon Lescaut, has long been familiar to 
English-speaking readers. Maurice Leloir made a series of 
paintings depicting various incidents of the narrative, and 
these were exhibited in this country and attracted wide atten- 
tion. It is still regarded as a masterpiece owing to its beau- 
tiful and simple portrayal of character. Manon Lescaut was 

341 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

imitated by George Sand in Leone Leoni, and the German 
writer, J. Brandes, employed it in his tragedy, Der Schiff- 
bruch. Puccini used it for his text in his lyric drama Manon 
Lescaut. The Abbe Prevost is also remembered for his jour- 
nal, Le Pour et le Contre, in imitation of the Spectator, and 
for his translations of Richardson's novels, Pamela, Grandi- 
son, and Clarissa Harlowe. 

Baptiste Louis Gresset (1709-1777) reached the height of 
his fame with his comedy Le Mediant, a picture of the lan- 
guage and customs of contemporary society. His humorous 
conceit, Vert-Vert, is not forgotten. The subject of this poem 
is a parrot, which, taught by some nuns of Nevers, has become 
a prodigy of intelligence and devotion. The Sisters of Nantes 
wish to see it; so it is sent to them by one of the boats that 
ply the Loire. During the voyage it hears the passengers and 
boatmen swear and curse, so that on arriving at Nantes it 
shocks the Sisters by the coarseness of its language, and they 
hasten to send it back to its teachers. Vert- Vert, obliged 
to do penance, mends his ways, and obtains pardon, but dies 
of indigestion from eating sugarplums. The author has enam- 
eled this theme with great delicacy, and pointed it with a 
quantity of epigrams, brilliant, if somewhat farfetched. He 
later added two new poems to Vert-Vert, Les Pensionnaires 
and L'Ouvroir. 

Alexis Piron (1689-1773) was quoted for his sallies of wit 
and his epigrams; his play, La Metromanie, on la manie de 
faire des vers, revolves upon unusually vulgar situations, but 
in the matter of animation, it is one of the foremost comedies 
of the century. Piron was himself a ' ' metromaniac ' ' ; in his 
youth, he covered with couplets and epigrams the margins 
of legal papers which he was given to write or copy. Hav- 
ing received his degree as lawyer, he wrote a brilliant ode, but 
so obscene, that his native town, Dijon, was indignant, and he 
was not allowed to practice his profession. He therefore 
gained a living as copyist, and continued to write epigrams 
against everybody. A candidate for the Academy, he for- 
feited his place by the remark in a visit to that institution, 
- ' There are forty of them who have the sense of four. ' ' One 
day, Piron wrote on Voltaire's door, the word " Coquin " 
(rascal). Whereupon Voltaire dressed himself elegantly, 

342 



TRAGEDY, COMEDY, POETRY AND THE NOVEL 

and came to call on Piron, saying: " Monsieur, I found 
your card on my door." 

Piron achieved celebrity in Paris where he wrote eighteen 
plays for the Theatre de la Foire and some operas-comiques, 
one of which, called I'Endriague, is very extraordinary, and 
has for the principal character a monster; the names of the 
characters are impossible, such as: Espadavantavellados, 
Elfriderigelpot, etc., but the music was by his compatriot, 
the great composer Rameau. Piron was finally elected to 
the Academie Francaise, but the king refused to ratify his 
election, so Piron wrote his own epitaph, thus: 

Ci-git Piron, qui ne fut rien 
Pas meme academicien. 1 

The lyric poets of this epoch were rhetoricians rather 
than poets. An exhaustion of the great sources of inspiration 
led to descriptions of nature without enthusiasm, and de- 
scriptive poetry— a kind of exercise in versification — became 
the genre in vogue. Of its numerous expressions in this 
period, it seems worth while to mention only the Saisons of 
Saint-Lambert — a cold, monotonous poem, of careful versi- 
fication — and the copious output of Delille. This is what is 
called the ' l literature of the Empire ' ' ; and Delille is its king. 
It is an extremely weak literature, in spite of the incontest- 
able qualities of a style that could adapt itself to the descrip- 
tion of the most ordinary objects. Gustave Lanson writes: 
" The eighteenth century made over antiquity to its own 
image, which resembled it like the divinities of the opera 
resemble the Homeric Olympus. There was nothing but 
esprit." 

The Abbe Delille (1738-1813) was one of those smart, 
witty abbes of whom there were so many in the eighteenth 
century — abbes who shone in the salons, and were occupied 
with the affairs of the church only in order to receive its reve- 
nues. He outlived the Revolution without accident. His 
poems include Les Jar dins, L' Homme des Champs, Les Trois 
Begnes de la Nature: descriptions on descriptions. " He 

1 " Here lies Piron who amounted to nothing, not even to an Academician." 

343 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

boasted toward the end of his life," said Victor Hugo, " of 
having made twelve camels, four dogs, three horses, including 
that of Job, six tigers, two cats, a game of chess, a backgam- 
mon-board, a draught-board, a billiard table, several winters, 
many summers, a number of springs, fifty sunsets, and so 
many dawns that he could not count them." His amusements 
in the drawing room occupy almost as much space in his 
poems as do the rural descriptions; we feel that the author 
" looked at the country only through the windows of the 
chateau. ' ' 

Florian (1755-1794), also, still lives because of his Fables, 
in which simplicity of narrative is united with a certain grace- 
ful delicacy and a well-pointed " moral." His Fables are 
easier to understand, and better adapted to the young, than 
are the more poetic and more capricious compositions of La 
Fontaine. Their titles embrace: Les Deux Voyageurs (The 
Two Travelers) ; Le Chat et le Miroir (The Cat and the Mir- 
ror) ; Le Singe qui montre la lanterne magique (The Monkey 
with the Magic Lantern) ; L'Ane qui joue de la flute (The 
Ass that Plays the Flute), etc. 

Ecouchard Lebrun called Lebrun-Pindare, which name 
has been preserved for him by posterity not without ironical 
intent, and Le Franc de Pompignan wrote odes. Of the 
latter 's sacred poems Voltaire said, " sacres ils sont, car 
personne n'y touche." 1 Jean Francois Marmontel is remem- 
bered for two mediocre novels: Belisaire and Les Incas. 
Finally, Malfilatre and Gilbert were — like Chatterton in Eng- 
land and Calderon in Spain — young poets consumed by mis- 
ery before their genius had fully ripened. Malfilatre com- 
posed a pretty poem of a mythological character, Narcisse. 
Narcisse is the son of the river Cephise. He falls in love 
with his own image while looking at himself in the waters of 
a spring, to the bottom of which he plunges, and is changed 
into the flower which bears his name. 

Gilbert (1751-1780) is the author of satires. The strophes 
of his Adieux a la Vie have become classic; a well-known 
stanza, and which is inscribed over the supposed remains of 
Gilbert in the catacombs of Paris, is this one: 

1 Sacred they are for no one touches them. 
344 



TRAGEDY, COMEDY, POETRY AND THE NOVEL 

Au banquet de la vie, infortune convive, 
J'apparus un jour et je meurs: 
Je meurs, et sur ma tombe ou lentement j 'arrive, 
Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs. 1 

ANDRE CHENIER 

On the eve of the Revolution, a great poet Andre Chenier, 
le dernier des classiques, appeared. Gustave Lanson writes: 
" If it has been so difficult to classify Andre Chenier, so that 
he has been frequently called romanticist a quarter of a cen- 
tury before that literary movement, it is because it has not 
been recognized how little the pseudo-classicists from 1780 to 
1829 have the right to be called inheritors or disciples of the 
seventeenth century — that of Boileau and Racine. Chenier 
is not to be distinguished from his contemporaries, except in 
that he goes back to the sources of great classic art. This 
genuine poet who read Virgil, Homer, and Theocritus in such 
exquisite sympathy with the antique world, and knew how to 
become enthusiastic about Malherbe as well — this curious mas- 
ter of form who imparted to degenerate classic verse such 
delicate and powerful rhythm and harmony, is the very man 
who understood " l'Art poetique " as Racine and La Fon- 
taine understood it, and who brought into realization Boi- 
leau 's original theories." 

Andre Chenier was born — as was his brother, Marie- 
Joseph, who was also a poet — in Constantinople, where their 
father was consul-general. Their mother, a Greek, ac- 
quainted Andre at an early age with the literature of her 
country; hence the originality of his poetry at a time when 
all verses seemed cast in the same mold. Having studied and 
cherished the literature of ancient Greece from his childhood, 
he was a real renovator of poetic sentiment. On his return 
to France, the Revolution broke out ; he greeted it with ecstasy, 
but fought its excesses with anger, in his Odes and lambes. 
He was arrested on account of some articles he had published 

1 At life's banquet, unfortunate guest, 
I appeared one day and I die : 
I die, and over my grave where I slowly descend, 
No one will come to shed a tear. 

345 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

in Le Mercure, voicing his indignant protest against the ex- 
cesses of the Terror. He would probably have been forgotten 
in prison and been released, with so many others, after the 
Ninth Thermidor, if his father, uneasy for his son's fate, had 
not gone to solicit his pardon. This step proved fatal; the 
very next day he was sent to the scaffold, in company with his 
friend, Roucher, the poet of the Mois. Just before his execu- 
tion, Andre struck his forehead with his hand and said : "It 
is unfortunate ; there was something in here. ' ' The guillotine, 
by cutting off that head, deprived France of a poet whose 
beginnings had given the greatest hopes. His ode on the Ser- 
vient du Jeu de Paume (The Oath of Tennis Court 1 ), and 
especially the Iambes, written in prison while awaiting death, 
and the exquisite elegy of the Jeune Captive, are in the first 
rank of satiric poetry, and of the most sublime lyric quality. 
The young captive was Aimee de Coigny, a companion of 
Chenier's captivity, who grieved at losing her life so early, 
and wished, like the flower which had only seen the dawn, to 
finish the day that was scarcely begun. Andre Chenier was 
only thirty- two years old when he died, in 1794. It was he 
who sang: 

L'art ne fait que des vers, le cceur seul est poete.* 

Le Sage had founded the novel of observation, J. J. Rous- 
seau had introduced the sentimental, moral, and philosophical 
genre, Prevost, the tragic passion ; Marivaux, the subtle anal- 
ysis of love, and with Bernardin de Saint-Pierre the pic- 
turesque and descriptive characterized the novel. 

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre — the greatest of Rousseau's 
pupils in the eighteenth century, and the disciple most di- 
rectly inspired by him — is a true poet in prose. During Jean- 
Jacques Rousseau's last stay in Paris the constant companion 
of his walks was Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, with whom, in 
tastes and character, he had much in common. Born at Havre in 
1737, he came of a family who professed to be descendants of 
Eustache de Saint-Pierre of Calais — famous for his devotion 

1 Where the deputies of the Third Estate took the oath not to separate 
until a constitution had been granted. 

2 Art makes but verse, the heart alone is a poet. 

346 



TRAGEDY, COMEDY, POETRY AND THE NOVEL 

to his compatriots when Edward III, in 1347, took that town 
and, irritated by its long resistance, demanded that six nobles 
of the city place themselves, with ropes around their necks, 
at his mercy. Adventurous and undisciplined, Bernardin 
de Saint-Pierre attempted several careers, sailor, soldier, 
and traveler. At one time he conceived the project of erecting 
a model city on the shores of Lake Aral in Russia, in which 
virtue and freedom should hold sway. Orion 2 , the man in 
power during the reign of Empress Catherine, to whom the 
imaginative Frenchman unfolded his plans, regarded him as a 
dreamer, and sent him as an artillery officer to Finland; but 
Bernardin did not like the conditions in Russia, and soon re- 
signed his commission. In the course of his travels he made long 
journeys through Prussia, Austria, and the French colonies. 
Everywhere his contemplative mind had been impressed more 
by the works of nature than by those of man; and it is these 
impressions and reflections that we find in his Etudes de la 
Nature and his Harmonies de la Nature. The countries he 
visited are depicted in his Voyage a VIle-de-F ranee; in his 
stories, Le Cafe de Surate and La Chaumiere Indienne; and 
especially in the story — the title to his fame — Paul et Vir- 
ginie, included in the fourth volume of his Etudes de la 
Nature. In this work he was able, with infinite art, to interest 
the reader in the life of two children whose mutual affection, 
brotherly and sisterly in its origin, develops unconsciously 
into love, and is at last rudely broken by an accidental death. 
The suavity of this touching idyll, to which the author has 
given as a setting the wild beauties of tropical nature, is 
unsurpassed. It voiced a protest against the superficialities 
and hypocrisies of society, and made a despairing appeal for 
nature and quiet that was re-echoed throughout Europe. The 
novel won for Saint-Pierre a swift and an immense popular- 
ity, and still occupies a place of honor among the literary 
productions of the eighteenth century. It is said that when 
the author read his book in the salon of Madame Necker, to 
the assembled elite of the social and the literary world, it 
fell flat. Thomas went to sleep, Buffon demanded his carriage 
in a loud voice, and Madame Necker superficially compli- 
mented him. The author was in despair, but, encouraged 
afresh by some old friends, he had the story published. In 

347 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the first year it ran through upward of fifty editions. Every 
baby was christened Paul or Virginie. 

This story and La Chaumicrc Indienne are the two works 
in which Rousseau's influence is most strikingly revealed. 
In the Chaumiere Indienne, the author's antipathy to cul- 
ture is also evident: an Englishman goes to India to search 
for truth, only to find the people imbued with the egotistical 
idea of caste. During his sojourn he is caught in a storm 
in the woods, and seeks shelter in an Indian hut. The occu- 
pant, a pariah capable of generous thoughts for those who 
have made him an outcast, proves to be in the possession of 
the true wisdom. He teaches that real happiness consists in 
being pure and unsophisticated. Chenier has described this 
philosophical story as the best, the most moral, and the short- 
est of novels. It is much less sentimental than Paul et Vir- 
ginie, and is not lacking in humor; and for these reasons 
many persons prefer it to his more famous tale. Les Voeux 
d'un Solitaire, which appeared on the eve of the Revolution, 
is a chimera of social reform. 

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Etudes de la Nature (Studies 
of Nature) contain brilliant descriptions, but they are worth- 
less from a scientific point of view and sentimental to the 
point of weariness. He points out the harmonies of human 
beings in their relation to one another — the things, physical 
and moral, in which they correspond and differ ; the similar- 
ities and contrasts which, in consonances and accords, he likens 
to music. Finally, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre — like his master, 
Rousseau — rekindled, especially among the women of his gen- 
eration, the love of morality and religion. He died in 1814. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE REVOLUTION AND ITS LITERATURE 

With the meeting of the States-General on May 5, 1789, 
prophecy, preaching, and the mutterings against misrule, took 
at last the form of action. What Montesquieu, Yoltaire, 
Rousseau, and the Encyclopedists so eloquently foretold had 
come to pass. What the daring Beaumarchais 1 — the storm- 
bird — proclaimed through the puppets of the mimic stage, 
was emphasized and made awful by the mob of living men. 
Presently all the pent-up protests of the people against the 
crimes of profligate monarchy were to be expressed in acts 
of savage fury, unbridled license, and cruel murder, done in 
the name of liberty. It was not until two republics and four 
monarchies had been successively created and destroyed that 
France, with the establishment of the Third Republic, at- 
tained political stability, and with it prosperity and peace. 
As the literature of a nation is interwoven with the expres- 
sions of its society and government, it will not be amiss to keep 
in mind the state of France during these periods of conflict 
and change. To this end, let us refresh our memory with a 
brief historical review. 

The First Republic was proclaimed on September 21, 
1792, and lasted for twelve years, with three successive forms 
of administration: (1) The Convention, which condemned 
Louis XVI and is identified with the Revolutionary Tribu- 
nal's "Reign of Terror/' (2) The Directory, established 
on October 26, 1795, and overthrown by the coup d'etat of 
General Bonaparte on the 18th Brumaire, in the year VIII 
of the Republic— November 9, 1799. (3) The Consulate 

1 Napoleon I called his play Le Manage de Figaro "la Revolution deja 
en action." 

349 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

(declared on November 11, 1799), of which Bonaparte was 
First Consul, lasting until 1804. The First Empire that fol- 
lowed saw Napoleon crowned as hereditary emperor of the 
French; after gaining the mastery over the greater part of 
Europe, he was compelled to abdicate at Fontainebleau on 
April 11, 1814. The First Restoration, as the reign of the re- 
instated Bourbons was called, beheld Louis XVIII seated 
on the throne; but Napoleon returned from Elba in March, 
1815, and expelled him. The ensuing period, from the middle 
of March to June 22d, is known as the ' ' Hundred Days " ; it 
witnessed the unavailing struggles of Napoleon to reestablish 
his empire. With Napoleon 's defeat at Waterloo, Louis XVIII 
resumed his rule, by the will of the allied armies, and con- 
tinued to reign until 1824. His successor and brother, Charles 
X, was dethroned by the July Revolution (July 27-29, 1830) ; 
this ended the Second Restoration, and concluded the rule of 
the elder branch of the Bourbons. Louis Philippe, the " cit- 
izen king," representing the Orleans branch of the Bourbons, 
came into power with the July government, and was deposed 
by the Revolution of February, 1848. He had abdicated in 
favor of his grandson, the Comte de Paris; but a provisional 
government proclaimed at the Hotel de Ville (February 25th), 
the birth of the Second Republic. Its life was brief. By a 
coup d'etat (1851), Louis Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, 
had himself named President for ten years ; then in December, 
1852, he was crowned emperor — Napoleon III. In 1870 he 
was taken prisoner by the Germans at the battle of Sedan, 
and following the capitulation of Sedan, on September 4th, 
the Third Republic was established, with Adolph Thiers as 
President. 



POLITICAL ELOQUENCE AND PAMPHLETS 

The French Revolution and the devastating wars of Napo- 
leon did not promote literary development in France. But 
the Revolution gave birth to political eloquence ; and foremost 
among the orators of the tribune and the pamphlet was Mira- 
beau, the " French Demosthenes, ' ' whose eloquence domi- 
nated whole assemblies and whose voice inclined everyone to 
his wishes. 

350 



REVOLUTION AND ITS LITERATURE 

Honore Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau (1749-91), 
belonged to an Italian family long settled in France. His 
father, the Marquis de Mirabeau, was called the " friend of 
men "-—an appellation derived from the title of one of his 
works, L'Ami des Hommes. He was one of those anomalous 
beings who furthered the interest of humanity, but let no occa- 
sion pass to harass and ill-treat his own family; and he exer- 
cised, by reason of his obdurate and despotic character, a per- 
nicious influence over his son. Fathers, at that time, had the 
authority to put their sons in prison when they were not satis- 
fied with them, even if these sons were of age and married. 
Honore 's father, who was very harsh to him, exercised this 
authority repeatedly ; but Honore escaped, and settled in Hol- 
land. On returning to France he was imprisoned again, by 
virtue of a lettre de cachet. 1 Thus he acquired that hatred of 
despotism and that ardent love of liberty which inspired his 
eloquence. In his Essai sur le despotisme he preaches the Revo- 
lution. In the prison of St. Vincennes, where he was obliged 
to remain three years, he wrote his Essai sur les lettres de 
cachet et les prisons d'etat, and his famous letters, published 
later under the title of Lettres originates de Mirabeau ecrites 
au donjon de Vincennes pendant les annees 1777-1780. These 
letters embrace his correspondence with the Marquise Sophie 
de Monnier, to whom he dedicated his Erotica biblion. When 
he was ambassador to Berlin, where Frederick William II 
reigned, he wrote a series of official reports important to 
Prussian history: Histoire secrete de la cour de Berlin, and 
De la Monarchic prussienne sous Frederic le Grand. 

It is, however, his eloquence that brought him the greatest 
fame. When he spoke the whole assembly was breathless 
with surprise and admiration. It was he who uttered the 
famous words, when the Third Estate, assembled in the Salle 
du Jeu de Paume (Tennis Court) received orders from the 
king to disperse: " Go tell your master that we are here 
by the will of the people, and that we shall not depart save 

1 A lettre de cachet was a slip of paper, closed by the royal seal, containing 
an arbitrary warrant of imprisonment or exile without accusation or trial. 
These letters, it is said, were sold by some of the kings for large sums of 
money, a blank being left on the paper to be filled in by the purchaser 
with the victim's name. 

351 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

by the force of bayonets." Subsequently, during a period 
of twenty months, he delivered one hundred and fifty speeches, 
always forceful and fiery. It is said that the first proof of 
his eloquence was furnished at his own trial for divorce, when 
he pleaded for himself with such eloquence that his wife's 
lawyer cried with rage. 

Mirabeau sometimes received help in the preparation of 
his speeches; Chamfort was among those whose collaboration 
was most useful to him. When Mirabeau mounted the plat- 
form it was often after a conversation with Chamfort ; it was 
Chamfort, speaking through Mirabeau, who said: " From 
here you see the window through which Charles IX shot at 
the Huguenots.' ' " Facility is a fine thing," said Chamfort 
to Mirabeau, " provided that we never waste it." Mirabeau 
ascends the platform: " Gentlemen," he says, " it has been 
a long time since I said to myself that facility is one of the 
finest gifts of nature, but only on condition that it be never 
wasted. ' ' Yet the very gestures of Mirabeau were commands ; 
his motions the strokes of statesmanship. It was Chamfort 
who translated, " Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death," 
into ' i Be my brother or I will kill you. " * He was a radical 
pessimist who astonished, amazed, and saddened his con- 
temporaries. Mirabeau used to say of him: " I polish my 
intellect by contact with this mind, the most electric I have 
known." 

Nicolas Chamfort is not so well remembered for his dra- 
matic works as for his political pamphlets, his sharp sayings, 
and his connection with Mirabeau. It was he who gave to 
the Revolutionary army the motto : ' ' Guerre aux palais, 
paix aux chaumieres. ' ' 2 The Abbe Sieyes 's famous pamphlet 
on the rights of the Third Estate owes its title to Chamfort : 
Qa'est-ce que le Tiers-Etat? — Bien! — Que doit-il etre? — 
Tout! 3 

1 Heir von Bulow, the German chancellor, translated it thus: 

" Willst Du nicht mein Bruder sein, 
Schlag' ich Dir den Schadel ein." 

2 War with the palace, peace with the cottages. 

3 What is the Third Estate?— Nothing!— What should it be?— Every- 
thing! 

352 



REVOLUTION AND ITS LITERATURE 

Camille Desmoulins instigated the storming of the Bastille, 
and his pamphlet, Revolutions de France et de Brabant was 
influential in overthrowing the Girondists and royalty. 



THE THEATER: SONGS 

The French are a nation of theater-goers. Even while 
countless heads were falling under the guillotine, the passion 
for theatrical performances no wise diminished. In fact it 
grew; but the plays were political expressions of the day, 
and passed with the day. 

Marie- Joseph Chenier (1764-1811) is the dramatist of the 
Revolution whose works most vividly portray its hatreds and 
its hopes. Danton said of his play, Charles IX, ou Vecole des 
rois: " If Figaro has killed the nobility, Charles IX will kill 
royalty." This drama (1790), important in subject, but mis- 
erably executed, was immensely popular because it violently 
attacked tyrants, and in its titular subject the public saw 
Louis XVI. Chenier is also the author of the Chant du depart 
— a battle song of the Republic that made him famous, but 
which, nevertheless, contains no true poetry. 

Antoine Vincent Arnault became the idol of the populace 
in 1791 because of his tragedy Marius a Mintumes, and his 
revolutionary play, Lucrece, ou Borne libre. Under Napo- 
leon he held a post of honor, and wrote a Napoleonic play, 
Scipion; but his sentiments were seen to undergo a change in 
his Germanicus, written after Napoleon's downfall. Jean 
Baptiste Legouve gained favor with his tragedy, La Mort 
d'Abel; and Jean Frangois de la Harpe favored the Revolu- 
tion in both his tragedies and comedies. The political and 
satirical play, L'Ami des lois, by Laya (1793), was a violent 
satire on the Revolution, and caused a tumult at every per- 
formance — the royalists applauding and the republicans hiss- 
ing it. With the execution of the king its representations 
ceased. The greatest success of the times was an obscene 
drama, Jugement dernier des rois, by Marechal, which mocked 
the downfall of royalty. It was staged immediately after the 
execution of Marie-Antoinette. Jean Francois Ducis, at the 
beginning of the " Terror " made known to the French some 
24 353 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

of Shakespeare's greatest characters. When Othello was 
played and the scene of Desdemona's murder enacted, ter- 
rified screams arose from the audience, and many women 
fainted. The translations made by Ducis are very bad; 
critics have called him the Shakespearean bungler. Neverthe- 
less, he achieved a certain purpose. Among the playwrights 
who eschewed politics, are Jean Francois Collin d'Harleville, 
whose most effective comedy is Lcs Chateaux en Espagne, and 
Philippe Fabre d 'Eglantine, who wrote seventeen plays, of 
which La Philinte de Moliere is the best contemporary comedy. 
The suffix Eglantine — meaning the golden rose — was acquired 
by him as the winner of that emblem in the poetical contest 
of the Jeux fioraux in Toulouse. 

Tout finit par des chansons en France. The royal power, 
absolute power, the oppression of the people, ended with 
songs — the songs inspired by the Revolution. In the Archives 
of the Conservatoire ar.J' libraries of France there have been 
found about one hundred and fifty such chansons. Of these 
the earliest is the Qa ira, sung on the 14th of July, 1790, 
at the Fete de la Federation, the first anniversary of the 
storming of the Bastille. The words were suggested to the 
street-singer, Ladre, by an exclamation uttered by Benjamin 
Franklin, who, on learning from time to time, of his country- 
men's victories in the war of American Independence, during 
his sojourn in Paris, rubbed his hands, saying " Qa ira," " Qa 
ira " (" It will go, it will go," i. e., we shall succeed). The 
music of the Q a ira was that of a popular eontre danse 
called the Carillon national, composed by Becourt. At first 
the words were temperate, and merely designed to inspire 
courage; but by degrees the refrains added to the song took 
on a threatening nature, and became more and more ferocious 
as the Revolution progressed. Originally, the Qa ira ran 
thus: 

Ah! ga ira, 5a ira, 9a ira! 
Le peuple en ce jour sans cesse repete: 

Ah! ga ira, ga ira, ga ira! 
Malgre les mutins, tout reussira! 
Nos ennemis confus en restent la; 
Et nous allons chanter alleluia! 

Ah! ga ira, ga ira, ga ira! 
354 



REVOLUTION AND ITS LITERATURE 

Quand Boileau jadis du clerge parla, 
Comme un prophete il a predit cela: 
En chantant ma chansonnette, 
Avec plaisir on dira: 

Ah! ca ira, 9a ira, 5a ira! 
Malgre les mutins, tout reussira! 

Later, the refrain became: 

Ah! ca ira, 9a ira, ca ira! 
Les aristocrat' a la lanterne; 
Ah! ca ira, ga ira, ga ira! 
Les aristocrat' on les pendra! 

The Carmagnole was a song and dance, rivaling in popu- 
larity the Qa ira during the Revolution. The original song, 
written in 1792, was of a military character, and received 
its name from a dance popular in Carmagnola, a town in 
Italy, but the revolutionary song La Carmagnole, owes its 
name to the name of a jacket introduced into Southern France 
by Piedmontese workmen. Its innocuous nature as a popu- 
lar dancing song was transformed, in 1793, into the bloody 
Carmagnole des Royalistes. The refrain, however, to all the 
verses has remained the same : 

Vive le son! vive le son! 
Dansons la carmagnole, 
Vive le son du canon! 

The most famous of the patriotic songs is the Marseillaise, 
•which breathes patriotic fervor and love of country. The 
words and music were composed by Rouget de Lisle, a young 
officer in the garrison of Strasburg, in the midst of the mil- 
itary preparations at the time of the declaration of war 
between France and Austria. Rouget de Lisle called it 
Chant de guerre pour Varmee du Bhin. Soon afterwards, the 
singer Mireur sang it at a civic banquet at Marseilles, and it 
caused such a sensation that it was at once printed and dis- 
tributed among the volunteers of the battalion just leaving 
Marseilles for Paris. They sang it marching to the attack 
of the Tuileries, on August 10, 1792; then it spread spon- 

355 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

taneously throughout France, under the name of La Mar- 
seillaise. Its last verse, wrongly attributed to J. Chenier, was 
added by the Girondins, who sang it on their way to the guillo- 
tine. The Bourbons proscribed it, but the people of the July 
revolution of 1830, by which Charles X was forced to ab- 
dicate, marched to its music. So did the revolutionists of 
1848, who deposed Louis-Philippe. Napoleon III tried to 
substitute for it the Partant pour la Syrie, by Jean Laborde ; 1 
but since the Third Republic, in 1870, it has been officially 
recognized as the national hymn of France. Its first couplet 
runs: 

Allons, enfants de la patrie, 

Le jour de gloire est arrive! 

Contre nous de la tyrannie 

L'etendard sanglant est leve! (bis) 

Entendez-vous, dans les campagnes, 

Mugir ces fe>oces soldats? 

lis viennent jusque dans nos bras 

Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes! 
Aux armes, citoyens! formez vos bataillons! 
Marchons! (bis) qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons! 

The composer Salieri has used the Marseillaise in the open- 
ing chorus of his opera, Palmira; Grison employed it in the 
introduction to the oratorio of Esther (Racine) ; Schumann 
drew upon it in his song of the Two Grenadiers, and in his 
overture to Hermann and Dorothea (Goethe). Carlyle 
wrote: " The sound of it did tingle in men's veins, and 
whole armies and assemblies did sing it, with eyes weeping 
and burning, with hearts defiant of death, despot, and devil.' ' 



"Partant pour la Syrie, 
Le jeune et beau Dunois 
Venait prier Marie 
De bemr ses exploits." 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

In the middle of the sixteenth century "at last Mal- 
herbe came, ' ' x and reformed the French language ; and not 
until two hundred years later was it freed from its classic 
bondage. Dramatic poetry especially, was fettered by the 
French misconception of Aristotle's " unities," the unin- 
telligible interpretation of the dramas of antiquity, and the 
imperious mandates of royalty. It became in effect a kind of 
court poetry, the readers of which were limited to a few 
thousand persons, mostly in Paris. The classic form was, 
moreover, kept intact by the exclusion of all foreign influ- 
ences. 

But with the close of the eighteenth century and the be- 
ginning of the nineteenth, literature was revivified by imag- 
ination and sentiment. In the reaction from the bloody trage- 
dies of the Revolution, people turned their minds to peace 
and nature, and sought new modes of expression adapted to 
new conditions. The terrors and the miseries that Frenchmen 
had undergone quickened their sensibilities. Softened by the 
anguish of exile and suffering, men " looked in their hearts 
and wrote," touching a responsive chord in the hearts of 
others. Along with the ideas liberated by the social ferment 
was mingled the influence of that foreign literature brought 
to France during the wars of the Republic and of Napoleon. 
England, Germany, and the Orient all contributed to the 
great change that came in French literature; most notable 
was the influence exercised by Shakespeare and Goethe. The 
plays of Shakespeare had been performed for upward of 

1 Boileau. 
357 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

a century before they were known in France. Not until 
Voltaire dared to proclaim them as works of high art, were 
they recognized by a people to whom classicism seemed su- 
preme and unassailable. The Theatre anglais of Delaplace, 
published in 1746, contained a translation of some of Shake- 
speare's best plays; but the works of this translator left no 
lasting impression. It remained for Voltaire to set in motion 
an influence that became world-wide ; his revelation of Shake- 
speare 's genius spread to Germany, where Wieland (the 
German Voltaire) first translated the great dramas, some 
twenty years subsequent to Lessing's " discovery " of the 
bard of Avon. Meanwhile, Mercier, in his Du theatre, on 
nouvel essai sur Vari dramatique, called attention to the plays 
as true tragedy, and attacked the French classic drama, with 
its hampering rules. Finally, Pierre Letourneur lent a de- 
cisive impetus to the movement with his twenty volumes of 
prose translations of Shakespeare. In his preface he says: 
" Shakespeare could appear in the country of Corneille, 
Racine, and Moliere, and demand of the French the tribute 
of glory each nation pays to genius, which he would have 
received from these three great men had he been known to 
them." 

Goethe's influence on the literature of France at this 
time is recognized by the French as of great importance. 
His Werther, though inspired by the Nouvelle Helo'ise, sur- 
passed that Gallic production in significance, and left its 
impress on all the poets of the early nineteenth century im- 
bued with the sentiment of Weltschmerz. Napoleon greatly 
admired Werther. It was one of the few books he carried 
with him on his campaigns, and it was the subject of an an- 
imated discussion when he met Goethe in Erfurt. Werther 
affected the fashions as well as the literature of the French: 
the Werther costume and the hat a la Charlotte were much in 
vogue. Yet it must be admitted that Goethe's infinitely 
greater work, Faust, although translated some sixty times into 
French, achieved its greatest popularity in France through 
Gounod's operatic treatment of the Gretchen episode. The 
public, naturally, devours a novel in preference to philo- 
sophical poetry. Both Shakespeare and Goethe have been well 
translated and interpreted in France by A. Mezieres whose 

358 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Predecesseurs et contemporains de Shakespeare was awarded 
the prix Montyon; in 1898 M. Jusserand supplied a special 
need with his excellent work, Shakespeare dans Vancien 
regime." 

As we have seen, the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars 
were not actually productive of much important literature, 
but prepared the soil for its production. The literature of 
the First Empire was singularly sterile. It found its chief 
expression in descriptive poetry and in metrical translation. 
Its most honored exponents were petty poets, story writers, 
anecdote mongers, composers of the semi-elegiac — men like 
Fontanes, Arnault, Parny, Andrieux, and Delille, yet they 
were already antiquated. The advent of a new society, with 
new ideas and new tastes, was bound to introduce a new liter- 
ary form. 

However, at first, the reformers had few disciples. Under 
the Republic and the Empire, minds which were absorbed in 
political convulsions, and eager for glory, had little leisure 
for poetic works ; literature continued to be only a faint copy 
of the two preceding centuries. It was during the peaceful 
years of the Restoration that it began to take on a new 
character: so long separated by war from the other states of 
Europe, the French now hastened to renew that intercourse 
which is the life of nations. They came to know the ancient 
and modern treasures of Germany and England ; the sixteenth 
century was made an object of study, and the productions of 
the Middle Ages, so long ignored, were studied anew. The 
French mind thus prepared, the innovators undertook to in- 
troduce into poetry more imagination, more feeling and con- 
templation, and that individualism which marked the re- 
awakening of lyric poetry. They received the .name of 
Romanticists, and their merit consisted in freeing poetry 
from the restricting rules of classicism; they enriched the 
language, making truth and nature the essential features of 
form and topic, and thereby created a literature for the people. 
Yet this desire to create strong impressions and to lay hold of 
the popular imagination often led to grave faults, among them 
that of overstepping the normal. The subjects then became 
grotesque and loathsome, the language lost its simplicity and 
lucidity, and the style was involved and ambiguous. Victor 

359 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Hugo declared that the characteristic and not the beautiful, 
the realistic and not the ideal things of life should be 
portrayed. This naturally led into the paths of realism. 

The romantic school originated in Germany, toward the 
end of the eighteenth century with a number of poets, critics, 
and philosophers : August von Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis, Schel- 
ling, and others. Its greatest German representatives were 
Goethe and Schiller. These men worked to repudiate the 
French classic influence to which their literature, 1 as well as 
the English, had been subjected since the seventeenth century. 
They assumed the name romantic, as pertaining to the signifi- 
cation evolved from romances — fabulous, fantastic, poetically 
fanciful — the popular literature of the Middle Ages. This 
name was introduced into France by Madame de Stael, and 
given to a similar school. In France the movement was not 
accomplished until another revolution — confined, however, to 
literary territory — had occurred : the bitter fight between the 
adherents of the old classic school and those of the new school 
— the Romanticists. It raged from 1820 to 1830, the Roman- 
ticists finally winning a victory with the memorable per- 
formance of Victor Hugo's Hernani at the Theatre-Francais. 
A petition signed by seven Classicists 2 had been sent to King 
Charles X, asking that his theater at least be reserved ex- 
clusively for the classic drama ; but the king answered that in 
the playhouse his position was but that of any other citizen. 
So the performance took place; and those who would learn 
the incidents of that eventful evening will be repaid by the 
perusal of Theophile Gautier's Eistoire du Bomantisme. 

The reaction in literature spread to the arts and sciences. 
David d 'Angers was deposed — David, dictator of arts during 
the Revolution and the Empire, who was celebrated for the 
classic purity of his drawings; the rebels against the antique 
were led by artists such as Delacroix, Gros, Gericault. In 
music the foremost innovators were Chopin, Von Weber, 



1 French language in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, says A. 
Rambaud, " became the language of diplomacy, of the courts, of philosophy, 
of science, and of society, to that degree that the European aristocrats 
forgot their national languages." 

2 Lemercier, Viennet, Arnault, Jouy, Leroy, Jay, and Andrieux. 

360 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Wagner, Schumann. The science born with the century had 
its share in the new order, and its effect was visible in history 
and literary criticism. 

To return to literature, it may be divided in the nineteenth 
century into three periods. The first — the romantic period — 
extends to 1850 ; the second — the naturalistic period — to 1880 ; 
the third period is difficult to define concretely as it embraces 
various artistic tendencies. The chief precursor of roman- 
ticism was J. J. Rousseau. The two great pioneers of the new 
movement were Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, in the 
very beginning of the century, although the literary traditions 
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries continued to play 
an important role for the next thirty years. These two authors 
were followed by the Romanticists proper: Lamartine, Victor 
Hugo, de Vigny, de Musset, and the rest. The later Roman- 
ticists — Gautier, Balzac, George Sand, Flaubert — were af- 
fected by influences, very foreign to romanticism, which 
announced a new art. Chateaubriand created a world of 
images by associating the Christian Middle Ages with pagan 
antiquity. He sought to awaken in men strong and generous 
beliefs; to lead them to religion through nature and poetry. 
He expounded a criticism that explored the human heart, and 
applied local color and imagination to historical pictures and 
recollections. He modified the language. He enriched it with 
expressions, figures, forms, of a new character; he gave prose 
a coloring, a brilliance, and a melody that were unknown be- 
fore. Madame de Stael likewise upheld the moral as well as 
the religious principles which were to direct the social regen- 
eration; like Chateaubriand, she discovered unknown realms, 
and acquainted France with the German genius. 

Chateaubriand was the father not only of romanticism, 
but, pretty nearly, of all the forms of literary art in the 
nineteenth century. A passionate lover of every kind of 
beauty, a dweller in the solitudes of the New World, a writer 
who looked to the Orient, to Greece and Rome, ancient and 
modern, and to Italy — he came to reveal to his countrymen a 
sphere which included the whole earth. In doing so he in- 
troduced a cosmopolitan art instead of an art too excessively 
national. Francois Rene, Vicomte de Chateaubriand, was born 
at Saint-Malo in Brittany, in 1768, of an ancient and noble 

361 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

family. When the Revolution broke out he was a captain in 
the regiment of Navarre. He left France in 1791, and em- 
barked* for North America, ostensibly with the purpose of 
solving a geographical problem — the sea passage to India by 
way of Hudson Bay. He had letters of introduction to many 
eminent persons in the United States. Washington, who lived 
unpretentiously, without guards or servants in livery, gave the 
Frenchman a cordial welcome, and greatly impressed him by 
the simplicity of his character and surroundings. Chateau- 
briand made several unavailing attempts to discover a north 
passage, and then buried himself in the primeval forests of 
the wilderness — visiting the region of the Great Lakes and the 
country near the mouth of the Mississippi, and studying 
the Indians whose portraits he has left us. But hearing of 
the flight of Louis XVI and his arrest at Varennes, he returned 
to Europe, and went to join the army of the emigres 1 at 
Coblentz. Wounded at the siege of Thionville, and taken to 
England, where he lived several years in penury, he published 
in London his first work, Essai sur les Revolutions. Return- 
ing to France in 1800, he published Atala in the following 
year in the Mercure de France. It was enthusiastically re- 
ceived, as was his succeeding work, Bene; and his literary 
reputation was established. His Le Genie du Christianisme 
embraced these two episodes relating to the author's voyage 
in America. He had brought back from this country an im- 
mense quantity of literary material ; and he drew upon it for 
all the works we have mentioned, and for his Indian tale, 
Les Natchez. 

Atala is the story of a young savage girl, secretly con- 
verted to Christianity, who, in compliance with her mother's 
wish, has vowed solemnly not to marry. Falling in love with 
Chactas, a young half-breed warrior taken prisoner by her 
father and condemned to be burned, she lets him escape, and 
goes with him. But, rather than violate her vow, she poisons 
herself, and dies in his arms. Atala contains a magnificent 
description of the primeval forest; and in Meschacebe we 
have the real name of the Mississippi. The story exhaled the 

1 The royalists who left France in 1789 and succeeding years, and took 
refuge in England, Germany, Switzerland, and other countries. 

362 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

wild and mysterious fragrance of the American forests and 
revealed a new literature. Its freshness and brilliant style 
announced the author's genius. In it he appears as the 
originator of the idealized Indian whom Fenimore Cooper has 
portrayed in his " Leatherstocking Series." Atala is still 
popular in France, and is accounted a French classic. Criti- 
cism is unanimous in declaring that Chateaubriand excels in 
description of wild nature and the depiction of mystical, pas- 
sionate characters. 

Rene is the story of a young European who finds himself 
beset by an incurable ennui ; whether he travels or remains at 
home, whether he works or dreams, this ennui consumes him. 
A sister of Rene has fallen in love with him ; and in order to 
escape this unholy love, she retires into a convent. But at 
the moment when she makes her vows, Rene hears the fatal 
secret escape from her lips. Rene is one of the most beauti- 
ful and also morbid works of Chateaubriand. In it the 
author himself appears under the name of the hero. This 
personal note sounded by Chateaubriand was echoed especially 
by French poetry in the nineteenth century, and was produc- 
tive of the modern lyricism. It is Rene, issuing from Goethe 's 
Werther, whom we see through a veil in Lamartine, Victor 
Hugo, and Alfred de Musset. Hugo says : c ' You say, ' Speak 
of us.' — Speaking of me is speaking of yourself; human- 
ity is a chain." The poet, in picturing his own sorrows, 
pictures the sorrows common to the human heart. This sub- 
jective poetry has inspired an entire school, the heads of which 
are Lamartine, who has feeling; Victor Hugo, who has im- 
agination ; and Alfred de Musset, who has passion. 

This malady of Rene for a long time affected the youth 
of all countries, since we find this type in Germany, in 
Goethe's Werther; in Italy, in the Ortis of Foscolo; in Eng- 
land, in several characters of Byron; in Russia, in the works 
of Pushkin and Lermontov. 

Les Natchez is the continuation of Rene; the hero marries 
an Indian girl and dies in battle. This tale, a poem in 
prose, is a pathetic romance, and affords a curious portrait 
of savage life. 

In the Genie du Christianisme, ou la beaut e do la religion 
chretienne, Chateaubriand undertakes to prove the existence 

363 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

of God by the marvels of nature. This work was an immense 
success. Its eloquent and poetic ' ' apology ' ' for the Christian 
religion conformed to the wishes and plans of Napoleon Bona- 
parte, who was at that time (1801) negotiating the famous 
Concordat with Pius VII. Napoleon rewarded Chateaubriand 
with the post of secretary to the ambassador in Rome, and 
later made him minister plenipotentiary to Valais. But when 
the Due d'Enghien was put to death by order of the First 
Consul, Chateaubriand at once sent in his resignation; and 
his discourse on his reception at the French Academy, in 
which he criticised the government, finally put an end to all 
friendly relations. Napoleon exiled the new academician, 
and his place in the Academy remained vacant for twenty- 
four years. During the Restoration, Chateaubriand devoted 
himself to political life, and wrote for the royalist cause his 
De Buonaparte et des Bourbons. He accompanied Louis XVIII 
in his flight to Ghent during the One Hundred Days, and upon 
that monarch's restoration was advanced to the dignity of 
minister and peer of France. 

Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs, ou le triomphe de la reli- 
gion chretienne is a brilliant epic in prose on the triumph of 
the Christian religion and the fall of paganism; but it does 
not equal his other works. Before writing Les Martyrs, 
Chateaubriand had wished to see for himself the scenes he 
proposed to describe. He has beautifully recorded the story 
of his trip in his Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem. To begin 
with he goes to Greece, and imagines himself as the first to 
discover the ruins of Sparta; then to Constantinople and 
Palestine, where he wished to get inspiration for his work 
already prepared. He returns by way of Egypt, Tunis (con- 
juring up the past in his study of the ruins of Carthage), 
and Spain, where he finds the subject of one of his best 
nouvelles, the Aventures du dernier Abencerage. 

Chateaubriand could embellish, through his great gift of 
imagination, all the places he visited, yet without lapsing 
from historical and geographical accuracy, or destroying the 
local " atmosphere. ' ' Le dernier Abencerage is a story of the 
chivalrous type, the action of which takes place at Grenada 
in the sixteenth century, and tells the fate of the last Moorish 
prince. In this fresh and touching tale the author has been 

364 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

able skillfully to put in relief the triple character of the Arab, 
in Aben-Hamet; the Spaniard, in Don Carlos; the French- 
man, in Lautrec. Dona Blanca, by her beauty and her mis- 
fortune, crowns this little picture with a vivid and charming 
interest. 

The last years of Chateaubriand's life were filled with the 
editing of his Memoir es d' outre-tomb e, which as the title in- 
dicates, were not to appear until after his death. They are 
in twelve volumes, and comprise the years 1811 to 1833. 
These Memoires are intensely disappointing, imbued as they 
are with presumptuous vanity and a kind of self-glorification. 
Above all, they emphasize the faults of bombast and labored 
effort which in his other works are only occasionally dis- 
cernible. As we read the works of Chateaubriand in the 
numerical order of their production, we observe his political 
evolution. In 1800 he is very loyal to monarchy; later he 
gradually becomes liberal, and ends by being almost a 
republican. He himself says: " I am republican by inclina- 
tion, Bourbon through duty, and monarchist by force of 
reason." He died in 1848 and his body was interred opposite 
Saint-Malo, on Le Grand Bey, an island rock which he had 
bought with this intention; later a statue was erected to him 
not far from his tomb. 

MADAME DE STAEL 

Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baroness de Stael-Hol- 
stein, was born at Paris in 1766. She was the daughter of 
the Genevese banker, Necker, who became Secretary of the 
Treasury under Louis XVI. As a child she heard the con- 
versations of the men most distinguished in letters, science, 
and politics, who gathered in her mother's drawing-room. 
Reared at a time when mind was held to be the only thing 
of value, her rare intelligence had received the most preco- 
cious training. Her marriage with the Baron de Stael-Hol- 
stein, ambassador to Sweden, was a very unhappy one — and 
after ten years of wedded life she separated from him. Her 
salon became the rendezvous of all the distinguished men of 
the Directory. The star of Napoleon began to rise and 
Madame de Stael dreamed of being the " Egeria of the new 

365 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

power. " But soon a silent antipathy resulting in open war- 
fare separated " the generous ideologist and the authoritative 
Caesar." And during the entire reign of Napoleon the life 
of Madame de Stael was one long series of persecutions and 
exile. 

Madame de Stael was a great conversationalist. She talked 
better than she wrote: the animation of social intercourse, 
the play of repartee, gave to her elocution a color and a 
vivacity she did not always succeed in conveying with the pen. 
Her books have the fault of resembling conversations, and of 
seeming to be improvised ; the habit of philosophical specula- 
tion has given her literary style, even in descriptions and 
romantic stories, something of an abstract character which 
ends by becoming tedious. The Lettres sur le Caractere et les 
(Euvres de J. J. Rousseau appeared when the author was 
twenty -two years old. The fundamental thought of her work, 
De la littcrature consideree dans ses rapports avec les con- 
stitutions sociales (Literature in its Relation to Social Institu- 
tions), which appeared in 1799, is the idea of the indefinite 
progress of the human species. This last book did not greatly 
please Napoleon, and as her salon had become the rendezvous 
of the Liberals who discountenanced the military coup d'etat 
by which General Bonaparte had come into power, he gave 
orders to Madame de Stael to leave Paris, and not to approach 
it nearer than forty leagues. This was a terrible punishment 
for her ; Paris, with the conversation of its brilliant men, was 
her world. She went to Switzerland, and then to Germany, 
where she gathered material for a work on that country. Her 
curiosity was unlimited, and she often bored her hosts because 
she wanted to know everything, and to fathom all the 
phenomena of the German mind. 

Before going to Germany she had published Delphine, an 
epistolary novel, in which she advanced an argument of 
Madame Necker, her mother: " A man must know how to 
brave public opinion; a woman must submit to it." In this 
book she portrayed her own unhappy marriage and advocated 
divorce. A trip to Italy inspired another novel, Corinne, ou 
Vltalie — interesting especially as an autobiography, and full 
of ideas. In this celebrated book concerning great Italians and 
their work Madame de Stael sought to prove that literary 

366 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

glory is not compatible with the happiness incident to family 
affection. In the opening pages we see Corinne — a celebrated 
improvisatore in music and poetry — about to be crowned in 
the Capitol, as Petrarch was before her. She is given a sub- 
ject: " The glory of Italy/' and improvises beautiful verses. 
Her triumph is complete. A young Englishman, Oswald, 
devotes himself to her; and they travel together through Italy, 
talking of art, history, archaeology, and sometimes of love. 
Oswald is recalled to England on a brief mission; but his 
absence is prolonged. So Corinne, who is of English origin, 
goes to seek him there, and arrives in time to be present, with- 
out being seen, at the marriage of her own sister Lucile, to 
Oswald. Lucile lacks the brilliant talents of Corinne, but her 
modest qualities seemed to Oswald to give greater assurance 
of domestic happiness. Corinne dies of a broken heart. This 
tale is an original work, and a touching one, savoring at once 
of the novel, the poem, and the philosophic treatise ; but it has 
one noticeable fault : its intended enthusiasm too often seems 
to be declamation. In it Madame de Stael portrays her ideal 
self, in contradistinction to Delpliine, wherein she describes 
her real self. 

The success of Corinne was brilliant. Napoleon was so 
affected by the furor caused by the book that he himself 
wrote a criticism of it which was inserted in the Moniteur. 

Before Madame de Stael, German literature was unknown 
to the French. She took a glorious initiative, and her book 
De rAllemagne (1810) is a revelation of German art and 
civilization. It was a great service that she rendered her 
countrymen: to them she revealed the literary world of 
Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, AYieland, and Klopstock, the philo- 
sophic systems of Kant, Schelling, and Fichte, together with 
a highly interesting picture of the manners and customs of 
the German people. When De rAllemagne appeared, by per- 
mission of the censor, the Emperor had all the copies seized 
and reduced to pulp. He reproached Madanie de Stael osten- 
sibly for ignoring him, yet speaking well of Germany, with 
which country he was at war. The real cause of his dis- 
pleasure was the liberal ideas advanced, and the transparent 
allusions to his military despotism. A single copy escaped, 
which made it possible to print the book in England later. 

367 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Madame de Stael had resolved to go to that country ; but this 
was difficult, as at that moment all central Europe was occupied 
by the French armies. She succeeded in escaping from Switzer- 
land, an umbrella in her hand, as if she had gone out for a 
walk ; she traversed Austria, meeting with many vexations, and 
breathed freely only when she reached Russia. She has told 
us, in her Dix annees d'exil (Ten Years in Exile), of her 
wanderings on this journey, and hag recorded her impressions 
of the people and the Russian cities through which she passed. 
She was well received in Moscow, where the French had not 
yet come, and was feted by the Emperor Alexander and his 
family at St. Petersburg. 

In 1812, at the age of forty-six, Madame de Stael had 
secretly married a young officer of twenty-three, Albert de 
Rocca. After the fall of Napoleon, she returned to Paris, 
where she received a compensation of two million francs due 
her father from the public treasury. In Paris Madame de 
Stael again resumed her salon, dispersed by Napoleon, but in 
1817 she died without having been able to finish her two 
works: Dix annees d'exil and Considerations sur la Revolution 
frangaise. The last-named book together with Corinne and 
De VAllemagne are her three best productions. 

Of the many salons scattered by the Revolution, the salon 
of Madame Helvetius continued during the formation of the 
different governments, and became the society of the ideolo- 
gists, 1 who exercised such an important role from 1792 to 1802, 
and whose most celebrated expounders were Condorcet, Saint- 
Lambert, Destut de Tracy, 2 Garat, Volney. Napoleon was 
antagonistic to their doctrine and denounced them as im- 
practical theorists. 3 

After the Revolution other salons were again formed, but 
with the new political and literary conditions, their influence 
was never again so great. The most important were those of 

1 Followers of ideology, a mental philosophy which derives knowledge 
exclusively from sensation. 

2 In Les Elements d'ideologie. 

3 Mrs. Browning voices the same sentiments in Aurora Leigh : 

" Some domestic ideologue who sits 
And coldly chooses empire, where as well 
He might republic ! " 

368 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Madame de Girardin, Madame de Genlis, Madame de Beau- 
mont, Madame de Custine, and Madame Recamier. Madame 
de Beaumont 's salon called ' ' la petite societe, ' ' was frequented 
by Joubert, the incomparable conversationalist, and Chateau- 
briand who immortalized her in his Memoir -es d'outre-tombe. 
Madame de Custine and her Chateau de Fervacques also find 
a place in this work as well as in Le Dernier Abencerage, 
where the writer describes a poetic rendezvous with her at the 
ruins of the Alhambra. 

The salon of Madame Recamier was particularly cele- 
brated. Although ' ' la belle Juliette ' ' x was not a literary 
woman, she was a remarkable conversationalist with a marvel- 
ous aptitude of comprehension. Her husband, a rich banker, 
surrounded her with great luxury, and at her hotel in the 
rue des Saint-Peres, her visitors moved in a " quasi-religious 
awe of this rare flower of Paris. " After the loss of her 
husband 's fortune, Madame Recamier withdrew to the country 
estate of Madame de Stael at Coppet. Later she retired to 
the Abbaye-aux-Bois, a convent reserved not only for a reli- 
gious order of nuns, but as a place of seclusion for the great 
ladies of the world, who did not wish entirely to renounce 
society. Here Madame Recamier continued her famous salons 
at which shone Chateaubriand and Lamartine, and where 
Victor Hugo made his debut as " Penfant sublime." 

1 Madame Recamier was the model for the famous portrait by David in 
the Louvre, which is, however, only a sketch, and for Canova's bust of 
Beatrix. The Souvenirs et Correspondance tires des Papiers de Madame 
Recamier, is the work of Madame Lenormand, gathered from the papers 
of Madame Recamier after her death. 



25 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE ROMANTICISTS 

The Romantic movement found its best expression in four 
great poets: Lamartine, " a revolutionist without knowing 
it " ; Hugo, ' ' an exclusive and passionate genius, ' ' who under- 
took to renew poetry and prose; de Musset, the poet of love 
and fantasy; and de Vigny, who gave romantic poetry its 
philosophical and symbolical form. After these great masters 
came Auguste Barbier, Brizeux, Theophile Gautier, Sainte- 
Beuve, and others. 

Alphonse de Lamartine, born at Macon in 1790, was by 
parentage Alphonse du Prat ; but he inherited the fortune and 
the name of his maternal uncle, de Lamartine. He studied 
at the Jesuit college in Belley, and completed his education 
by travel. In 1814 he entered the King's Bodyguards as an 
officer of cavalry ; then, after two years of service, he took to 
traveling once more. In turn historian, publicist, diplomat, 
orator, and politician, he was a participant in the stormy crises 
of 1848, his name being a watchword of peace and security. 
When it was learned that King Louis-Philippe had just left 
Paris, he was put at the head of the Provisional Government, 
and twelve departments named him representative of the 
people. He owed this favor, on the one hand, to his modera- 
tion, and, on the other, to his Histoire des Girondins, which 
had appeared several years before, and had been read with 
passionate eagerness. But his popularity was not of long 
duration ; when a President of the Republic was to be chosen 
he obtained only a small number of votes compared with the 
support given him who was to become Napoleon III. So 
Lamartine reentered private life. 

His first literary work, published in 1820, was a volume 
of poems entitled Meditations poetiques. This little collection, 

370 



THE ROMANTICISTS 

says a French critic, revealed to France a new poetry coming 
from the heart in fine contrast with the factitious and myth- 
ological lyrics of Jean-Baptiste Rousseau and of Lebrun. The 
editor was persuaded that this book would find no buyers 
because it " resembled nothing "; yet forty-five thousand 
copies of it were sold in four years. Its vogue, however, was 
ephemeral. In fact, not a few of Lamartine's productions 
were written with the immediate purpose of paying his debts, 
and are no longer read. Lamartine imitated Byron, but 
Byron's power of passionate speech was beyond him: the 
Dernier chant du pelerinage de Childe Harold, and the Chute 
d'un ange, a fantastic poem in which the angel Cedar, 
charged with watching over Dai'dha, a daughter of the earth, 
is smitten with love to the point of renouncing his divine na- 
ture and sharing his lot with her, are obviously weak in com- 
parison with his models. Lamartine's Chant du sacre, an ode 
on the coronation of Charles X, won for him the cross of the 
Legion of Honor. One of his best lyric productions is Le Lac, 
written in memory of Elvira, the lost love of his youth. In 
his Preludes he sings : 

Un vent caresse ma lyre: 
Est-ce l'aile d'un oiseau? 
Sa voix dans le coeur expire, 
Et Phumble corde soupire 
Comme un flexible roseau. 

The style of these poems is easy, abundant, brilliant; yet 
wanting in precision and simplicity. Lamartine's rhymes are 
often bad, his expressions vague, and his style meek and 
melancholy. His great merits are his rich imagination, his 
wonderfully melodious language, and his harmonious versifica- 
tion ; Lamartine was spoken of as the embodiment of poetry. 
He himself expressed this idea : 

Je chantais, mes amis, comme l'homme respire. 1 

In his Harmonies poetiques et religieuses he seems to have 
attained the acme of his lyric talents. Lamartine's Jocelyn, 

1 1 sang, my friends, as men breathe. 
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THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

a tragic poem in Alexandrine verse, is, according to Beranger, 
the best work of French narrative poetry. 

His novels are Les Confidences, Raphael, Genevieve, Le 
Tailleur de pierre de Saint-Point, Graziella. The last-named 
tale was inspired by his first love, Graziella, the daughter of a 
fisherman of the Isle of Ischia. Among his historical works 
are the Voyage en Orient and the Histoire des Girondins. His 
literary criticisms embrace: Le Civilisateur and Portraits 
litteraires — the Portraits including Bossuet, Cicero, Homer, 
Socrates, Byron, Nelson. Lamartine, by way of national com- 
pensation, received the interest on a fund of 500,000 francs, 
which he enjoyed from 1867 up to the time of his death 
in 1869. 

VICTOR HUGO 

Victor Hugo (born in 1820 at Besangon) was, at different 
times, a royalist, like his mother ; a Bonapartist, like his father 
(who was a general of the Republic) ; and a democratic 
Republican at his death. 

The works of Victor Hugo, as numerous as they are varied, 
attest his great imagination and his extraordinary power of 
thought. He is one of the first among the French lyric poets ; 
it is, perhaps, through his poetry, rather than his prose, that 
his fame will endure. He was a great colorist, a great 
musician; his inspiration is true, profound, and powerful. 
But sometimes his style lacks purity and elegance ; in general, 
style with him is enriched too much at the expense of the 
idea and feeling. There is an exuberance of words, figures, 
images, found in no other French writer. In his preface to 
Cromwell he says : ' ' Poetry has three ages, of which each cor- 
responds to an epoch of society : the ode, the epic, the drama. 
Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times are epic, modern 
times are dramatic. The ode sings eternity, the epic solemnizes 
history, the drama paints life. The characteristic of the first 
poetry is naivete; of the second, simplicity; of the third, 
truth. The ode lives on the ideal, the epic on the grandiose, 
the drama on the real. This triple poetry flows from three 
great sources: the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare. ' ' He adds: 
' ' All that is in nature is in art ' ' ; which has led a French 
critic to comment: " With this last principle, which ends in 

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THE ROMANTICISTS 

a gross realism, Victor Hugo could dare everything. He did 
indeed dare everything: by the side of pathetic and sublime 
scenes he placed enormous improbabilities, absurdities, hor- 
rors ; he made to triumph on the stage the excesses of a brutal 
and repulsive materialism. It is to be regretted that a talent 
so beautiful and so great should have thus let itself be led 
astray by the spirit of system, by a badly understood imita- 
tion of Shakespeare. Without considering criticism (criticism 
never affected Victor Hugo) and the protests of people of 
taste, he persisted in his course; he fabricated successively 
several dramas based on antithesis and lyrical tirade — dramas 
which, galvanized by impossible passions, fell flat almost at 
their origin despite the uproar of sectarians. His plays are 
the least meritorious of his works — wanting in dramatic 
development, and presenting showy characters without the 
semblance of real life. In all his personages the studied use 
of antithesis is too apparent : we see in Ruy Bias a valet and 
a man of genius, in Triboulet the sublime father who is also a 
ridiculous fool, in Marion Delorme a courtesan who loves 
purely. Of all his dramas, Hernani and Buy Bias are the 
only ones still performed, and even these are saved from 
oblivion by virtue of the lyric passages.' ' On the day of the 
first performance of Hernani there was a veritable battle 
on the floor of the Theatre-Francais between the partisans 
of Racine, of the classic school, and the admirers of Victor 
Hugo, of the Romantic School. Younger and more numerous, 
Hugo's adherents prevailed, and the dramatic innovation 
triumphed. 1 His plays include: Hernani — the best of them; 
Cromwell; Le Boi s f amuse; Lucrece Borgia; Buy Bias; 
Angelo; Marie Tudor; Marion Delorme; Les Burgraves — his 
weakest drama. 



HERNANI 

The action is laid in Spain in the sixteenth century. Doiia 
Sol, the heroine, is courted by a king in disguise ; by Hernani, 

1 Hugo has set forth the doctrines of the Romantic School in the preface 
of his drama Cromwell. He defines Cromwell as "an Attila made by 
Machiavelli." 

373 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

a bandit; and by the duke, old Ruy Gomez, her uncle (in 
whose house she is living), who wishes to make her his wife. 
One evening, while she is awaiting the bandit, the king, Don 
Carlos, arrives, and conceals himself in a closet, while Dona 
Sol and Hernani converse. She is ready to leave everything 
and follow Hernani into the mountains. But old Gomez comes 
in, and is furious on seeing two men with his niece. The king, 
who is Charles V, calms him by saying that he came to consult 
him on a matter of importance: the Emperor Maximilian is 
dead, he wishes to get into line to succeed him, and he has 
come to talk it over. As for Hernani, says the king, he is a 
gentleman of his suite; and so he is allowed to go. This 
bandit, Hernani, is a great personage, Don Juan of Aragon, 
who, offended with the king, has gone to live as an outlaw in 
the mountains. He returns the next day, in order to bear 
away Dona Sol; but the king spoils it all, Hernani 's band is 
dispersed and a price is set on his head. Dona Sol decides to 
accept the hand of Ruy Gomez, but is resolved to stab herself 
afterwards. In the midst of the preparations for the wedding 
a pilgrim enters to whom Gomez extends hospitality ; but the 
pilgrim, seeing what is going on, reveals his identity: he is 
Hernani. Suddenly the sound of trumpets announces Don 
Carlos, who is seeking the celebrated bandit ; but Ruy Gomez 
will not violate the laws of hospitality, and refuses to deliver 
his enemy. In retaliation, the King of Spain seizes Dona Sol. 
On condition that he will aid Ruy Gomez to punish the king, 
the bandit's life is spared. Hernani gives his horn to Ruy 
Gomez, swearing on his honor to die on the day the duke 
sounds the signal. The duke and the brigand join a con- 
spiracy which is on the point of breaking forth against Don 
Carlos in Aix-La-Chapelle. The conspirators meet at night 
in the vaults of the ancient cathedral where the ashes of 
Charlemagne rest. The king, who has gotten wind of the 
enterprise, is there before them; and while awaiting their 
coming he thinks of Charlemagne, and in a celebrated mono- 
logue asks him for inspiration. The conspirators assemble, 
and the king, hidden behind a pillar, hears them swear his 
death. Hernani is designated by lot to assassinate him. Then 
Don Carlos comes out of the shadow, and his soldiers sur- 
round the conspirators, who would be lost if the tomb of 

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THE ROMANTICISTS 

Charlemagne had not inspired the king to generosity. He 
pardons his enemies, restores Hernani's title, and yields Dona 
Sol to him. The marriage is celebrated; but Gomez, still 
jealous, sounds the horn in the midst of their happiness. 
Hernani requests a respite ; the old man will not grant it. So 
Hernani takes poison, and Dona Sol, seizing the vial from his 
hand, drinks what remains, and they die together. Verdi's 
opera Emani is founded on Hugo's play. When it came 
to be performed in France, in 1864, the characters were made 
Italian and the title was changed to II Proscritto, at Victor 
Hugo's request. 



RUY BLAS 

This is the only drama in which Hugo, acting on his own 
theory, mingled the tragic and the comic. The action takes 
place in Spain during its decadence. The queen, in her walk 
through the park, finds each day a bouquet of flowers on a 
bench — blue flowers from her native Germany, and very rare 
in Spain. An unknown person brings her this gift at the 
peril of his life; the walls are marked with fragments of his 
lace cuffs. With the last bouquet is a note in which he com- 
pares himself to a moth in love with a star. Several days 
thereafter the queen discovers the unknown lover in a mes- 
senger who has come to bring her a letter from the king 
(Charles II), who is hunting, and does not appear in the 
play. The queen has had cause to complain of the minister 
of police, Don Salluste; she has had him removed from office, 
and exiled. He, in turn, has sworn to be avenged, and having 
by chance learned the sentiments of his servant (the unknown 
lover) for the queen, he manages to bring him in contact with 
her. Don Salluste then has his own cousin, Don Cesar de 
Bazan, taken by the police and conducted far from Spain; 
and presents to the court his servant, Ruy Bias, under the 
name of Don Cesar, returned from a long voyage. The queen 
becomes the protectress of the spurious Don Cesar, and soon 
makes him her premier, meanwhile remaining quite invisible 
to him. Ruy Bias, now become a chancellor of the kingdom, 
reforms abuses, and governs with a firm hand. The queen, at 

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THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the end of a scene in which he has shown himself truly great, 
can no longer conceal her love for him. But Don Salluste 
suddenly appears ; he has returned to Madrid under a disguise, 
and meets Ruy Bias in a mysterious house. Salluste indeed 
wishes to lure the queen into this house, reveal to her the iden- 
tity of Ruy Bias, and get her to leave Spain with him. The 
queen falls into the trap; Don Salluste explains how he has 
avenged himself, and what he expects of her. Ruy Bias there- 
upon runs him through with a sword, and, taking poison, casts 
himself at the feet of the queen, asking her grace and pardon. 
The queen embraces him and avows her love for him; and 
Ruy Bias dies, happy in this love. 

In Le Roi s : 'amuse 1 — an historical drama introducing 
Francis I and his fool Triboulet — Hugo displays his pre- 
dilection for contrasting the beautiful with the ugly ; it proved 
so repulsive to contemporary taste that only two performances 
of it were permitted. Marie Tudor is also an " historical " 
drama, setting forth the invented story of Mary's love for 
an Italian, Fabiani, who in turn loves a peasant girl. He 
is therefore arrested and condemned to death, but escapes. 

Hugo's works in prose are very numerous, and quite in- 
ferior to his poetry. His two great novels are Notre-Dame de 
Paris and Les Miser ables; the others are: l' Homme qui rit 
(The Man who Laughs) ; Quatre-vingt-treize (Ninety-three) ; 
Les Travailleurs de la mer (The Toilers of the Sea) ; Claude 
Gueux; Le dernier jour d'un condamne (The Last Day of a 
Condemned Man) ; Han d'Islande; Bug Jargal. 

Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the most powerful and most 
dramatic works of this type. It is a magnificent archaeological 
study. 2 The story opens with the representation of a " mora- 
lite " play; then he who is able to make the most hideous 
grimace is elected pope of the fools. The successful candidate 

1 The libretto of Verdi's opera, Rigoletto, is based on this play. 

2 Robert Louis Stevenson writes: "The moral end that the author had 
before him in the conception of Notre-Dame de Paris was to denounce the 
external fatality that hangs over men in the form of foolish and inflexible 
superstitions. To speak plainly, this moral purpose seems to have mighty 
little to do with the artistic conception; moreover, it is very questionably 
handled, while the artistic conception is developed with the most consum- 
mate success." 

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THE ROMANTICISTS 

appears at a window ; it is Quasimodo who is chosen, and we 
are astonished to see that this grimace we have applauded is 
his natural expression, He is the bell ringer of Notre-Dame ; 
hump-backed, lame, and deaf, but devoted to the man who 
picked him up as a child on the steps of the cathedral, and 
also to Esmeralda, who gave him water to drink one day when 
he was dying of thirst in the pillory. Esmeralda is a beautiful 
and wild young gypsy, who dances in public places, accom- 
panied by a goat which she has taught to imitate certain great 
persons and to write by means of movable letters. These 
gifts cause her to be accused of sorcery and brought to the 
scaffold. The dramatic interest consists in the circumstance 
that Quasimodo is forced to sacrifice one of the two persons 
to whom he is devoted, in order to save the other. Claude 
Frollo (an archdeacon of the Church of Notre-Dame), his 
foster-father, and the benefactor of his youth, persecutes 
Esmeralda with offensive attentions. Eepulsed by the young 
woman, his passion is changed to hate, and he obtains her 
condemnation by his efforts. Although Quasimodo cannot 
save her from punishment, he avenges her by hurling Claude 
Frollo from the top of the tower of Notre-Dame on the very 
place of Esmeralda's execution. Two years later Quasimodo's 
skeleton is found in Esmeralda's grave. 

Les Miser dbles, a social novel, has for its hero Jean Val- 
jean, condemned to the convict prison for stealing bread, one 
day when his sister's children were hungry. He is released 
at an advanced age, and with a passport which, in setting 
forth that he had been a felon, closes all doors to him. One 
person, however, does not turn him away — the holy Bishop, 
Myriel, worthy of the earliest period of Christianity. Valjean 
repays the bishop 's charity by stealing his silver plate. When 
arrested and brought before the bishop, the holy man declares 
that his candlesticks were not stolen, but that he had given 
them to the convict. Valjean is touched deeply; henceforth 
he is an honest man. Through his energy and ability he 
becomes rich, and occupies an honorable place in society, only 
to learn that an innocent man is about to be condemned to 
the galleys in his stead. So he makes himself known, and 
once more becomes a convict. But he escapes, and returns to 
Paris, in order to take care of a little girl, Cosette, whom a 

377 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

wretched woman, on her deathbed in a hospital, had previously 
confided to his care. After many efforts, he finds her, rears 
her with loving care, and then disappears that she may wed 
her lover, Marius, who, together with Cosette, forget Jean 
Valjean in the egotism of their love. 

Les Miserables is a sort of humanitarian novel, containing 
very beautiful passages and also some unnecessary chapters. 

Le Dernier jour d'un condamne is a psychological study 
of the pangs of death. Claude Gueux is a realistic novel. In 
the Travailleurs de la mer the terrible phenomena of the sea 
constitute the principal interest. The chapter descriptive of 
the fight with the devilfish is one of the most remarkable in 
the book. The basis of the novel, L' Homme qui rit, is an 
antithesis between moral beauty and physical deformity — a 
characteristic trait of Hugo's style. Bug Jar gal, which deals 
with the rebellion of the negroes of San Domingo against the 
French, and Han d'Islande, whose hero is a man-eater, are 
examples of the author's skill in treating the atrocious and the 
horrible, a tendency which led Heine to call Hugo a " de- 
formed genius. ' ' 1 Quatre-vingt-treize is an episode of the in- 
surrection of the people of La Vendee and Brittany against 
the First Republic. 

Among Hugo 's critical works and pamphlets are Napoleon 
le petit, a virulent attack on Napoleon III, in which he 
describes the coup d'etat. The Histoire d'un crime is a de- 
tailed recital of the coup d'etat of 1851. 

Hugo's real glory lies in his gifts as a lyric poet. The 
most of the poems in the Odes and Ballades are political and 
royalist, but in the Ballades the author has also tried to give 
us some idea of what the poems of the first troubadours were 
like. Les Orient ales is a collection of brilliant and magnifi- 
cent verses. It opens with Le Feu du del, in which the poet 
describes the terrible catastrophe that engulfed Sodom and 
Gomorrah. A great number of the poems are related to the 
Orient, Turkey, Greece — which was then struggling for its 
independence — and to Moorish Spain. Les Tetes du Serail, 
in this collection, describes the frightful dialogue of three 

1 Renouvier declared that Hugo was "more craftsman than artist," and 
Amiel called him "half genius, half charlatan." 

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THE ROMANTICISTS 

amputated heads — the heads of three Greek chieftains hung 
on the gratings of a palace. But the gem of this volume is 
Fantomes. In Les Feuilles d'automne (Leaves of Autumn) 
are collected many poems of melancholy charm. Les Chants 
du Crepuscule (Songs of Twilight) are poems inspired by 
this thought: " Everything to-day, in ideas as in things, in 
society as in the individual, is at the stage of dawn." This 
' ' stage of dawn ' ' was not only in society ; it was especially at 
this time in the soul of the poet. 

Les Chdtiments (Chastisement) is a violent satire against 
the men of the Second Empire, and Hugo's masterpiece as a 
satirical poet. That part of the poem known as V Expiation is 
especially grand. The collection is divided into seven books, 
the subjects of which indicate ironically the different moral 
phases of the coup d y etat: " Society is Saved "; " Order is 
Reestablished " ; ' ' The Family is Restored " ; ' ' Religion is 
Glorified"; "Authority is Sacred"; "Stability is As- 
sured "; " The Deliverers will Deliver Themselves." 

In L'Annee terrible the poet has pictured the stirring 
events of "the terrible year," from the capitulation of Sedan 
in 1870 until the end of July, 1871. La Legende des siecles 
(The Legend of the Ages) is a magnificent and prodigious epic 
written as a series of narratives which embrace all history 
since creation. Among other poems are : Les Voix interieures 
(Inner Voices) ; Les Rayons et les ombres (Rays and Shad- 
ows) ; Les Contemplations; Jjes Religions et la Religion; 
I'Ane (The Ass) ; Les Quatre vents de V esprit (The Four 
Winds of the Mind). 

Hugo 's amazing egotism — a curious feature of his genius — 
finds characteristic expression in his poem, Hon Enfance (My 
Childhood). It is further illustrated in an anecdote related 
by Mr. Henry Wellington Wack : " In Les Travailleurs de la 
mer you will find the picture of a Scotch Highlander playing 
the bagpipe. Throughout the novel the author calls it a ' bug- 
pipe.' Some of the people of Guernsey who sprang from the 
North Country protested against the burlesque upon their 
national musical instrument : ' There is no such word as bug- 
pipe ; it is bagpipe — bagpipe — bag — ! ' ' It is bugpipe, ' re- 
torted the poet, ' because I, Victor Hugo, poet, dramatist, peer 
of France, etc., say so. What I write becomes right because I 

379 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

write it. The howling hullabaloo looks like a bug, and I say 
it shall be a bugpipe.' " 

Some of Hugo's poems are eloquent with his ineffable ten- 
derness for children ; there is nothing more charming of this 
kind than his verses in Les Feuilles d'Automne: 

II est si beau, l'enfant, avec son doux sourire, 
Sa douce bonne foi, sa voix qui veut tout dire; 

Ses pleurs vite apaises, 
Laissant errer sa vue etonnee et ravie, 
Offrant de toutes parts sa jeune ame a la vie 

Et sa bouche aux baisers! 

Hugo began to write poetry when he was fourteen years 
old, and at the age of twenty-two he had received three prizes 
from the Academy. The prix des jeux floraux of Toulouse 
was awarded him for his odes: Les Vierges de Verdun, Le 
Retablissement de la statue de Henri IV, and Mo'ise sur le Nil 
(Moses on the Nile). 

These odes also brought him material success in the form of 
a pension of two thousand francs from Louis XVIII ; and this 
enabled him to marry the playmate of his youth, Adele 
Foucher. Mr. Henry Wellington Wack, in his Romance of 
Victor Hugo and Juliette Drouet, writes : "Madame Hugo died 
in 1868, thirty-five years conscious of Juliette Drouet 's 1 part 
in her husband's life. . . . That the legal wife should submit 
to a mistress being installed in a house a few hundred feet from 
her own, and even consent to visit her and permit her sons 
and daughters to do so throughout a long term of years — all 
as a concession to the waywardness of genius — is an example 
of wifely self-abnegation which would have done credit to 
Chaucer's patient Griselda. He generally dined with Madame 
Drouet, often with his sons and friends. The latter would 
generally pay their respects to Madame Hugo first, then pass 
on down the street to the livelier social condition of Madame 
Drouet 's ' l petit salon. ' ' That strange and uncouth combina- 
tion — the beautiful and the sublime hand in hand with the 
ugly, the grotesque, the uncanny — thus characterizes not only 
Hugo's works, but his life as well." 

Honor and glory attended Hugo's career. In 1841 he was 

1 Madame Drouet was an actress of mediocre talent. 

380 



THE ROMANTICISTS 

received as a member of the French Academy ; two years later 
he was raised to the dignity of a peer of France. Then he 
entered politics, and embraced the most radical ideas; his 
name is identified with various episodes of the national history 
of France. Under the Second Empire he was proscribed for 
twenty years, and took refuge in Guernsey. 

Hugo rose at three o'clock in the morning and worked un- 
til noon. The rest of the day was devoted to reading, corre- 
spondence, and walks; he retired every evening at half past 
nine. Of an iron constitution, he worked in an immense 
glass cage, without blinds, which opened on the sparkling sea, 
"with a broiling sun and a roar that would daze anyone else." 
It is related of him that when in Guernsey he was accustomed 
to bathe standing in a tub of water on the roof, near the 
rain gutter, even in winter when it was freezing. 

Greeted by Chateaubriand as the enfant sublime, his lit- 
erary career endured for more than sixty years. He was the 
soul of the Cenacle — a society of young poets whom love 
of letters and a certain community of tastes and sentiment 
brought into close relation. The Cenacle flourished about 
1828, and among its members were A. de Vigny, Soumet, 
Sainte-Beuve, Resseguier, Beauchesne, Guiraud, J. Lefevre, 
E. Deschamps, and de Musset. 

When Hugo died in 1885, at the age of eighty-three years, 
the entire world took part in his funeral. Behind the poor 
man 's hearse on which his coffin had been placed, more than a 
hundred thousand persons followed. His body, after lying in 
state under the Arc de Triomphe, which had been transformed 
into a mortuary chamber, was transfered to the Pantheon. 
All France mourned the death of its great poet. 

DE MUSSET 

After Villon, lyric poetry in France suffered an eclipse from 
which it did not emerge for three hundred years : not until the 
coming of Chenier and the poets of the early part of the nine- 
teenth century. Of its three foremost modern interpreters, 
Hugo is perhaps the most popular by virtue of his variety and 
his command of words. In elevation of thought he is some- 
what below Lamartine. Musset — who was not at first fully ap- 
preciated by the French — surpasses him in lightness, elegance, 

381 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

and facility. Rhythmically, says one critic, Musset is the most 
fascinating poet of Prance — a poet who fills the soul with his 
magical music. Musset was the poet par excellence of love 
and passion. Sainte-Beuve in his Causeries du lundi writes: 
' i So long as there is a France and French poetry, the passions 
of Musset will live as do the passions of Sappho." 

Louis Charles Alfred de Musset, born at Paris in 1810, of a 
family of men of letters, was a brilliant student, and com- 
pleted his studies at the age of seventeen years, winning the 
" grand prix " for philosophy. He tried his hand at several 
careers — medicine, law, banking, painting, and in each case 
unsuccessfully. In 1830, at the age of twenty years, he was 
the youngest and one of the most brilliant among the habitues 
of the Cenacle, in the salon of Victor Hugo. There one 
evening, he won recognition as a poet by reading, before the 
Cenacle, to its astonishment and delight, a poem in eulogy of 
the Master, Victor Hugo. Happy and proud at being ap- 
plauded, Alfred de Musset, until then idle and dissipated, set 
seriously to work, and entered upon literary life by publish- 
ing a volume of verse entitled Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie. 
This blustering and mocking collection of poems was followed 
by Tin Spectacle dans un fauteuil, dedicated to his friend 
Tattel, containing a drama, La coupe et les levres (The Cup 
and the Lips) ; a comedy, A quoi revent les jeunes filles; an 
elegy, Le Saule (The Willow) ; and a narrative poem, Na- 
mouna, very much in the style of Byron's Don Juan. His 
four Nuits (Mai, Decembre, Aout, Octobre) are his master- 
pieces — the most pathetic songs that love and suffering have 
ever inspired. 

Musset published in the Revue des Deux Mondes a series of 
Nouvelles and stories which were later combined in two vol- 
umes. The Poesies Nouvelles express all the melancholy, bit- 
ter regret, and lost hopes that his heart contained. His grace- 
ful Comedies et Proverb es are dramatic pieces which he had 
not written to be performed. On ne badine pas avec V amour 
(Trifle not with Love), perfect in conception and language, 
and La Quenouille de Barberine (Barberine's Distaff) are 
among the prettiest of his comedies. 

The drama, Andre del Sarto, is a masterpiece of truth 
and passion. One of the most celebrated Italian painters of 

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THE ROMANTICISTS 

the sixteenth century, Andre, has received from Francis I of 
France considerable sums of money with which to buy pic- 
tures in Italy. His young wife loves pleasure, and Andre 
gratifies her cravings without counting the cost — promising 
himself to make good by his work what she has spent. Con- 
fronted with the loss of his honor, he discovers at the same 
time that this woman, for whom he sacrificed so much, loves 
another — his favorite pupil, whom he had brought up in his 
own house. The sorrow of the old painter is the more poign- 
ant inasmuch as he can blame neither his wife nor her lover, 
who have not ceased to respect and venerate him. So he 
leaves them free to marry by killing himself. 

In prose de Musset wrote a great autobiographic novel, 
La Confession d'un enfant du siecle, in which, under the 
transparent veil of romance, he narrates the history of his 
stormy youth. It is the record of the disenchantment he ex- 
perienced during his breaking off with George Sand, who had 
taken care of him when he was dangerously ill at Venice. 
They soon separated, but the following year, in Paris, they 
were again the best of friends. In his Lettres de Dupuis a 
Cotonnet, Musset pokes fun at the Romanticists. 

Musset 's is an original lyric talent compounded of strange- 
ness and beauty. He set great store by his originality, and 
indignantly denied that in Namouna he had imitated Byron. 
In. verses addressed to a friend he says : 

On m'a dit Tan passe que j'imitais Byron; 

Vous, qui me connaissez, vous savez bien que non. 

Je hais comme la mort l'6tat de plagiaire; 

Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre. 1 
Again : 

Byron, me direz-vous, m'a servi de modele. 

Vous ne savez done pas qu'il imitait Pulci? 

Rien n'appartient a rien, tout appartient a tous. 

C'est imiter quelqu'un que de planter des choux. 2 

1 It has been said to me in the past year that I imitate Byron; you who 
know me, know well that it is not so. I have a mortal hatred for plagia- 
rism; my glass is not large, but I drink in my (own) glass. 
2 Byron, you tell me, has served me as a model. 
Do you not know then that he imitated Pulci? 
Nothing belongs to anybody, everything belongs to everybody. 
Planting cabbages is imitating somebody. 
383 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

This was a variation of Moliere's famous saying: " Je 
prends mon bien ou je le trouve " (" I take my own where I 
find it ") ; nevertheless, we cannot help perceiving that his 
Mardoche and Namouna are very much in the manner of 
Byron. 

Musset took especial delight in scoffing at the critics. In 
his Ballade a la Lune, he commences by putting this strophe 
before them to feed on : 

C'Stait dans la nuit brune; 
Sur un clocher jauni 

La lune 
Comme un point sur un i . . . etc. 

We can imagine the concert of critical declamation that 
this violation of the classic rules provoked. The poet, who 
had sought to mystify his critics, replied : 

On dit, maitres, on dit qu' alors votre sourcil, 
En voyant cette lune et ce point sur cet i, 
Prit l'effroyable aspect d'un accent circonflexe. 1 

A critic says of de Musset : ' ' He is an adorable and imper- 
tinent frolicsome child; he defies, braves, and banters at the 
same time the bewildered reader, who tires himself out trying 
to follow him in his rapid and fantastic course. 

Musset died in 1857, and was buried in the Pere-Lachaise, 
where, according to his wish, expressed in his poem Lucie, a 
weeping willow shades his grave : ' ' ou la bouche sourit et les 
yeux vont pleurer," with the following stanza carved in the 
stone : 

Mes chers amis, quand je mourrai, 

Plantez un saule au cimetiere. 

J'aime son feuillage eplore, 



1 These verses and the preceding ones, rather too fantastic for success- 
ful rendering into English, are easy to understand however: "The moon 
standing out in the sky over a steeple and looking like a dot over an i"; 
and " 'tis said, my masters, that upon seeing that moon and that dot over 
the i, your brows knit into a frightful circumflex accent." 

384 



THE ROMANTICISTS 

Sa paleur m'en est douce et chere, 
Et son ombre sera legere 
A la terre ou je dormirai. 

"Be assured," says Rocheblave, "that, on calm nights, the 
somber yew tree of Nohant 1 and the pale willow of Pere 
Lachaise bend toward each other, attracted, as it were, by 
instinct; and that, despite the distance, the same caressing 
breeze comes to kiss them and murmur in their foliage fra- 
ternal words. ' ' 2 



ALFRED DE VIGNY 

Count Alfred de Vigny was born of a patrician family, at 
Loches in Touraine, in 1797. His father was an old cavalry 
officer, distinguished in the Seven Years ' War ; his mother was 
the daughter of an admiral. In his youth he was fed with 
tales of battle and the sea. "I always loved to listen,' ' he 
has said, ' ' and when I was a child I early contracted the taste 
for these things while seated on the wounded knees of my old 
father. At first he told me stories of his campaigns, and, on 
his lap, I found war seated beside me. He showed me war 
in his wounds, war in the parchments and blazons of his 
fathers, war in the great ancestral portraits of men in armor, 
which were hung in Beauce in an old chateau." 

Alfred de Vigny was a royal musketeer, then an infantry 
captain; but, a stranger to every favor, he retired from the 
service in 1828, to devote himself more freely to poetry. At 
the age of twenty-six years, his beautiful imagination had al- 
ready taken its poetic flight; and when Victor Hugo, at the 
height of his glory, opened his salon to younger talent, de 
Vigny was among the first in the Cenacle. 

An adept in Romanticism, de Vigny approaches the classic 
by his carefulness of form and the elegance of his verse; his 

1 George Sand is buried there, with a yew tree on her tomb. 

2 The best translation of lyric poetry is necessarily such a feeble render- 
ing of the original that it is quite impossible for readers unfamiliar with 
French to comprehend the poetic genius of Hugo and Musset. It may be 
added that Taine, while admitting that France has produced no great poet, 
puts Musset above Tennyson. 

26 385 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

lyric poems have an exquisite grace and purity. He drew 
his inspiration from the Bible, Dante, Milton, Klopstock and 
Ossian. The majority of the poems in Poemes antiques et 
modernes were written during the military life of the author, 
and were reclassified as follows: Poemes mystiques: Moise, 
Eloa, Le Deluge; Poemes Antiques: La Fille de Jephte, La 
femme adultere, Le Bain de Suzanne, La Dryade, La Som- 
nambule, Le Bain d f une dame romaine, Symetha; Poemes 
modernes: La Neige, Le Cor, Le Bal, Dolorida, Madame de 
Soubise, La Prison, Le Trappiste, La Serieuse. 

Mo'ise is the eternal complaint of genius misunderstood by 
the masses : 

Et, debout devant Dieu, Moise ayant pris place, 
Dans le nuage obscur lui parlait face a face. 
II disait au Seigneur: "Ne finirai-je pas? 
Je vivrai done toujours puissant et solitaire, 
Laissez-moi m'endormir du sommeil de la terre." ■ 

La Neige is a tradition of the love of Eginhard and 
Emma, daughter of Charlemagne. La Serieuse is a mag- 
nificent picture of the poetic side of a sailor's life. The sub- 
ject of Le Cor is the death of Roland at Roncevaux. 

The scene of the longest of these poems, Eloa, ou la sozur 
des anges, takes place in the celestial world, in the midst of 
the stars and planets. Eloa is an angel, born of a tear which 
Jesus shed at the death of Lazarus, and to which God gave 
life. In converse with her sisters, she has heard the chief of 
the fallen angels spoken of ; and she feels that if she saw this 
great culprit, she would console him, and lead him back to 
righteousness. Tormented with this thought she wanders in 
the solitudes of the sky. One day she meets an angel of bril- 
liant beauty and seductive melancholy. They converse ; then, 
seeing that she cannot save Satan, Eloa perishes with him. 

In his last volume of verse, Les Destinies, de Vigny be- 
comes the "poet of despair" — a great philosophic poet with 

1 And, standing before God, Moses 
Spoke to Him face to face in the dark cloud. 
He said to the Lord: "Shall I not end? 
Shall I then always live powerful and lonely? 
Let me sleep the sleep of the earth." 

386 



THE ROMANTICISTS 

a marvelous gift for expressing the infinite sadness of life. 
Among the most remarkable of the poems in Les Destinies 
are: La mort du loup, La Flute, La Maison du berger, and 
especially La Colere de Samson. 

De Vigny 's novels are: Cinq-Mars, Stello, ou les consulta- 
tions du docteur noir and Servitude et grandeur militaires. 
Cinq-Mars is the best historical novel of French literature ; the 
story runs thus: Louis XIII has left Eichelieu as regent in 
his stead. Richelieu had placed near the king, in order to 
amuse his leisure and to watch him, the young and brilliant 
Cinq-Mars, who, taking his position seriously, has sought to 
displace Richelieu. The king and the king's brother, the Due 
d 'Orleans, enter into the conspiracy with Cinq-Mars, who be- 
lieves that to insure its success it is imperative to accept the 
proffered aid of Spain. Richelieu is warned of the plan : the 
king disavows his favorite, the Due d 'Orleans disavows his ac- 
complice. Cinq-Mars is arrested with his friend, de Thou, and 
Richelieu has them both put to death. Episodes of this novel 
are the love of Cinq-Mars for Marie de Gonzague ; the case of 
the priest, Urbain Grandier, who is put to death for having 
bewitched the nuns of Loudun; and the incident known in 
history as the Journee des Dupes (November 11, 1630). 1 

In Stello the author seeks to prove that under all gov- 
ernments the poet is ignored and deserted. He tells the story 
of Gilbert, dying of poverty in the hospital, under an abso- 
lute monarchy ; of Chatterton, poisoning himself from despair 
and shame, under a constitutional monarchy; and, finally, of 
Andre Chenier, conducted to the scaffold under the Republic. 
Each of these recitals is a masterpiece of style; this novel is 
the most popular work by de Vigny, and expresses the domi- 
nant thought of his life. 

Servitude et grandeur militaires is a collection of episodes 
in which the author exalts military honor. 

Attracted by the theater, de Vigny made a translation of 
Othello; he wrote La Marechale d y Ancre, an original drama 
on the death of Henry IV, and Chatterton — brilliant and 

1 So called because the enemies of Richelieu, including Marie deMedicis, 
mother of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, his wife, were completely duped 
in their plans for the minister's downfall. 

387 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

eloquent plays only in respect to their literary style. He 
also wrote a comedy, Quitte pour la peur. His dramatic 
masterpiece, Chatterton, was received with great favor. He 
shows us Chatterton as the great unrecognized poet, strug- 
gling against the sordid miseries of life. The youth has 
taken lodgings in the house of a rich, coarse-mannered mer- 
chant, who has married a melancholy and gracious young 
woman, Kitty Bell. Always trembling before her husband, 
but full of sympathy for all who suffer, Kitty pities this 
young man whom all the world neglects, and this pity grad- 
ually becomes love. The other characters are an old Quaker, 
a friend of Chatterton ; Lord Talbot ; and the Lord Mayor of 
London, who, in a fit of generosity, comes to offer the poet a 
situation as valet de chambre. Chatterton, in despair, poisons 
himself, and Kitty dies. 

Alfred de Vigny was a great man, a great poet, a great 
prose writer. During the last twenty-five years of his life he 
condemned himself to complete silence — shut "in his ivory 
tower,' ' enveloped in mystery and solitude. The publication 
of his posthumous work, Les Destinees, in which appears 
a noble and great poetic talent, revealed in part the secret 
sufferings, the bitterness, the disillusion and disappointment 
of his life. He died in 1863. 

Casimir Delavigne (1793-1843), one of the most brilliant 
of the early nineteenth century Pleiade, attained the sort of 
popularity that is perishable : his name, rather than his works, 
survives. Influenced by the romantic school, he did not shake 
off the traditions of classicism; and so he fell between two 
stools. He caught the popular fancy with the political ideas 
of the moment and with his skill in versification; but he is 
no longer in fashion. After the Invasion (by the Allied 
Armies), he wrote a number of songs, collected under the title 
of Les Messeniennes, 1 in which he bewailed the fate of 
France, her king, and her people ; later he published a second 
collection, with the same title, celebrating her victory: these 
poems were enthusiastically received because they expressed 
the national sentiment. The July Revolution inspired him to 

1 It was Tyrtseus, the elegiac poet, whose songs inspired the Spartans 
to victory over the Messenians. 

388 



THE ROMANTICISTS 

compose certain patriotic hymns: La Parisienne (the music 
by Auber) with which he fondly hoped to replace the Mar- 
seillaise; the Varsovienne, composed for the Poles ; La Bruxel- 
laise, and others. His tragedies and comedies were staged 
with a success in great measure attributable to the art of their 
interpreters — Mademoiselle Mars and the great Talma. The 
tragedies include Louis XI — Delavigne's best play, which 
proved to be one of the most suitable mediums for the acting 
of the late Henry Irving; Les Vepres Siciliennes; Le Paria; 
Marino Faliero; La fille du Cid; Les Enfants d'Edouard. 
The comedies are: Les Comediens; L'Ecole des Yieillards; La 
Princesse A.urelie. Later in life, Delavigne, with pecuniary 
regard in view, collaborated with Scribe in Le Diplomate, La 
Somnambule, and other plays. 

GAUTIER 

Theophile Gautier (1811-72), born at Tarbes in the south 
of France, began his career as a painter — working for two 
years in the studio of Rioult. He soon laid aside the brush 
for the pen ; but in his exercise of the literary art he sought 
and obtained effects which can be described only in terms 
of his earlier profession; he was a great painter in words, 
a wonderful artist in his employment of color. If his work 
does not live it will not be for lack of literary form and 
style, but because of its deficiency in ideas and soul. As a 
journalist his contributions were of extraordinary worth; in 
criticism and in descriptive writing for the press he revealed 
exceptional gifts of insight and expression. Gautier was the 
doughty champion who led the Romantic hosts in their battles 
with the defenders of classicism; it was Le grand Theo, of 
heroic bulk with flowing locks, red waistcoat, and pale-green 
trousers, who dominated the claque (men hired to clap) that 
rallied around Hugo at the memorable performance of 
Hernam, on the 23d of February, 1830, and this red 
waistcoat obtained for him immediately a proverbial reputa- 
tion. In reference to it Gautier wrote: "Yes, our poetry, our 
books, our essays will be forgotten, but our red waistcoats will 
endure. This spark will be seen long after everything which 
concerned us will have become extinguished in darkness and 

389 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

will distinguish us from our contemporaries whose works were 
not better than ours, but who wore somber waistcoats." 
Gautier, in turn, himself became the head of a new school, 
and profoundly influenced the younger men who came after 
him. In his poetry he expressed the transition from the per- 
sonal and subjective attitude of the Romantic school to the 
impersonal and objective verse of the Parnassiens, whose 
apostle he was, and for whom his "Emaux et Camees summed 
up his conception of poetry — structure and color, according to 
this creed, being more important than sentiment and ideas. 
His earliest poems include the Comedie de la mort and Al~ 
bertus, in both of which the fantastic is pushed to an extreme. 
In the preface to his very improper novel, Mademoiselle de 
Maupin, Gautier enunciates principles antagonistic to ac- 
cepted canons of morality and upholds the fundamental plea 
of naturalism, "Art for Art's sake." He defines himself as 
" un homme pour qui le monde exterieur existe." Gautier 's 
Contes et Nouvelles resemble in style and sentiment the 
Contes fantastiques of Hoffman, 1 who, after Goethe, was the 
German poet best known to French readers. The romantic 
novel of adventure, Le Capitaine Fracasse (the source of 
which is Scarron's Roman Comique) is a vivid and brilliant 
picture of the life of a company of strolling players in the 
days of Louis XIII. Captain Fracasse is the name assumed 
by the hero of the tale — de Sigognac, and it has become syn- 
onymous with boaster and braggart. In Fortunio, Gautier has 
described luxury in its extreme manifestations. Readers who 
have little French can perhaps best get a glimpse of this 
author's opulent style and sensuous imagery through the 
medium of Lafcadio Hearn's sympathetic translations of cer- 
tain short stories — a genre of which Gautier was a master. 
His studies entitled Les Grotesques are singular examples of 
his skill. Besides his literary and art criticisms for La Presse 
and Le Figaro, a remarkable product of his journalistic ac- 
tivity, should be mentioned his highly original articles descrip- 
tive of his travels throughout Europe — in Spain, England, 

1 Hoffman's fantastic tales are one of the few literary productions in 
which the most bizarre imagination and the widest digressions from the 
theme do not impair the merit of the work. 

390 



THE ROMANTICISTS 

Belgium, Holland, Italy, Russia. His works comprise about 
three hundred volumes. Gautier had merits and defects that 
have given rise to no little confusion of critical opinion; but 
his mastery of style and form, and his ability to make the 
reader share in his power of visualization seem to establish his 
fame as something more than ephemeral, and ought to have 
secured for him, it would seem, a seat in the Academy. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE HUMORISTS AND THE SATIRISTS 

A group of writers who may be classed as the humorists 
were Charles Nodier, Xavier de Maistre, Rudolph Toepffer, 
and Alphonse Karr. 

Charles Nodier (1783-1844) had manifold talents. He 
was a novelist, poet, historian, philologist, entomologist, 
scholar, and journalist; and he diffused his gifts with the 
greatest vivacity and intelligence. Louis XVIII appointed 
him librarian of the Bibliotheque de TArsenal; and, at the 
end of the year 1823, Nodier became for a time the center of 
the literary movement which had taken the name of Roman- 
ticism, his salon being the rendezvous of the Cenacle. Alfred 
de Musset loved to recall those days to Nodier : 

Lorsque rassembles sous ton aile paternelle, 
Echappes de nos pensions 

Nous dansions, 
Gais comme Foiseau sur la branche, 

Le dimanche, 
Nous rendions parfois matinal 

L' Arsenal I 1 

Nodier encouraged all these young and enthusiastic 
writers by his example. He had written so much that he 
himself did not know the names of all his works. What he 
published was sufficient to make a library. Nodier was a bril- 
liant stylist and a most successful writer of fantastic short 
stories: Trilby, ou le lutin d'Argail, in which a little Scotch 
imp is in love with Jeanne, the farmer's wife; Histoire d'un 

1 Nodier's salon was called the Arsenal, name of the Bibliotheque de 
V Arsenal, of which he was the librarian. 

392 



THE HUMORISTS AND THE SATIRISTS 

roi de Boheme et de sept chateaux, a quaint fantasy in the 
manner of Sterne; Mademoiselle de Marsau; Les quatre talis- 
mans; La Neuvaine de la Chandeleur; Le Chien de Brisquet; 
Smarra, ou les demons de la nuit. Among his other works 
are: Le Dernier banquet des Oirondins; Etudes sur la Revo- 
lution frangaise; Jean Sbogar, the story of a robber chieftain 
— copied after Schiller's Karl Moor. Nodier also wrote a 
Dictionnaire des onomatopees de la langue frangaise, Melanges 
tires d'une petite bibliotheque, and a Dictionnaire universel 
de la langue frangaise. 

Vapereau says: " Allowing for the publications inspired 
by circumstances, and improvised under the influence of the 
impressions or even of the interest of the moment, there re- 
mains in the person of Charles Nodier one of the most charm- 
ing and delicate of our story writers. He was a true chiseler 
of the language, and his most whimsical works are those which 
are the most carefully worked out. Open to the most diverse 
influences, and suited to transmit them all, he represents very 
well the convulsive epoch into which he was thrown, and is 
one of the masters of his generation in literature. He has 
the curious, mobile, capricious, humoristic spirit; he has the 
love of paradox, and yet the feeling for regularity ; ardor yet 
patience; the requisite reverence for the traditions of the 
language and literature. An observer of the beginnings of 
French Romanticism, he excites and encourages it, but does 
not enter its ranks; he springs directly from those masters, 
ancient or modern, national or foreign, who have united form 
with the caprices of the imagination." 

But Nodier lacked conception, seriousness, and force. For 
him form was all; the graces of the language were his pas- 
sion. Very well versed in the French language, he was an 
excellent writer, and restored to current usage a number of 
words fallen into desuetude at the end of the eighteenth 
century. It is said that in order to improve his handwriting 
he copied thrice the Gargantua and Pantagruel of Rabelais, 
thus acquiring a command of sixteenth century words and 
phrases which he put into circulation, greatly to the enrich- 
ment of the language. 

Count Xavier de Maistre was born in 1763 at Chambery, 
Savoy, but lived most of his life in Russia. He wrote several 

393 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

little works distinguished by naivete, grace, and simplicity. 
The Voyage autour de ma chambre has immortalized the name 
of its author. This literary trifle, in the manner of Sterne, 
abounds in delightful observations, expressed in a delicate, 
lucid style. Since Hamilton * no foreigner had written French 
with equal grace and lightness. He published also: L' Expe- 
dition nocturne; Le Lepreux de la cite d'Aoste, an admirable 
moral analysis ; Les Prisonniers du Caucase, in which are de- 
scribed the adventures of an officer who succeeds, by dint of 
bravery and skill, in escaping from the hands of the Tche- 
tchenques; Prascovie, on la jeune Siberienne, the story of a 
young Siberian girl who came to St. Petersburg, alone and 
on foot from Tobolsk, to ask for her father's pardon from the 
Emperor Paul. De Maistre's complete works fill but one large 
volume. 

Rudolph Toepffer, born in Geneva, in 1799, was first intro- 
duced to the French in a letter written by Xavier de Maistre, 
commending him as a writer of his own school. Sainte-Beuve 
pronounced Toepffer 's tale, Le Presbytere, a masterpiece; 
this work along with the Bibliotheque de mon oncle, won him 
recognition. La Traverses, L f Heritage, Rose et Gertrude — 
collected under the title of Nouvelles genevoises — are all 
charming reveries in which mirth and melancholy, didacticism 
and ironical humor, are happily mingled. His Menus propos 
d'un peintre genevois are humorous art talks. Toepffer was 
an artist as well as a writer and a master at an excellent 
school; and his illustrations for the Voyages en zigzag (de- 
scriptive of summer journeys with his pupils) enhance the 
pleasing quality of these narratives. His album of caricatures 
with fantastic text attracted the attention of Goethe. 

Alphonse Karr (born 1801), the humorist of the romantic 
school, gained reputation as a satirist of society; in his de- 
clining years he turned to the culture of flowers at Nice — de- 
riving a respectable income from the sale of artistic bouquets. 
Karr's first literary success was inspired by his emotions on 
being jilted by his sweetheart, who had promised to wait un- 

1 The French author, Count Anthony Hamilton, born in Ireland, son of 
Sir George Hamilton, and brother-in-law of the Comte de Gramont, whose 
Memoires he wrote. 

394 



THE HUMORISTS AND THE SATIRISTS 

til he had made his fortune: his Sous les tilleuls — a poem 
which he afterwards turned into prose — was his ironic answer 
to her inconstancy. In other stories, too, he has drawn upon 
his own life for "copy." The Chemin le plus court, which 
proved very successful, sets forth the miseries of unhappy 
marriage. His epistolary tale, Voyage autour de mon jardin, 
is an engagingly humorous account of flowers and insects, in- 
terleaved with stories grave and gay. Genevieve is his most 
poetic work, and Fort en theme, the one by which he is perhaps 
best known. The scenes of nearly all his tales are on the sea- 
shore of Normandy. For several years he followed his pet 
pursuit of social satirist in a very bright and readable 
monthly journal, Les Guepes (The Wasps), of which he was 
editor and publisher. It enjoyed a large circulation, and made 
him many enemies. 

Beranger and Barbier, poets, and Courier, political 
pamphleteer, were the most daring satirists of the age. 

Beranger, the supreme chansonnier of France, though re- 
garded as a classicist, found admirers among the adherents 
of the Romantic school. He appealed not only to the popular 
ear, but to poets as well. Heine adored him; Goethe knew 
his songs by heart. " Wise and prudent like Franklin,' ' 
remarks one critic, " amiable epicurean like Horace and La 
Fontaine, Beranger lifted up the song to the dignity of the 
ode." For fifteen years he tried his hand at all kinds of 
poetry, from the idyl to the epic, before he discovered that 
the chanson was his natural medium of expression. As he 
himself says in his beautiful poem, La Vocation: 

Jete sur cette boule 
Laid, chetif et souffrant: 
Etouffe dans la foule 
Faute d'etre assez grand; 
Une plainte touchante 
De ma bouche sortit. 
Le bon Dieu me dit: "Chante, 
Chante, pauvre petit! 

His songs produced a more powerful effect than any 
satirist in prose may hope to attain; for prose satire is read 
by the few, whereas song ' ' is made for the masses, and, with 

395 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

the aid of music and the refrain, it runs, it flies, it engraves 
itself on the memories of all." In his refrains, Beranger 
usually expresses the whole intent of his songs. They reflect 
the life of the people : 

Mes chansons c'est moi. 

Le peuple c'est ma muse. 1 

Pierre Jean de Beranger, the son of an impoverished noble- 
man, was born in Paris in 1780 at the house of his grand- 
father, a poor tailor. In his youth he knew great misery, and 
was educated chiefly by his own efforts. At last, in dire 
distress, he sent a collection of poems to Lucien Bonaparte, 
himself a poet and a patron of the arts. Bonaparte was de- 
lighted with the poems, and yielded to Beranger his own 
income of one thousand francs which he received as a mem- 
ber of the French Academy. Later, Beranger also obtained a 
small stipend as secretary of the University of Paris, and he 
was thus enabled to pursue his vocation as poet. Le Roi 
d'Yvetot, " who took pleasure for his code," established his 
reputation, and thereafter his chansons became immensely 
popular. His satirical songs of a political nature were written 
chiefly during the Restoration, after the fall of Napoleon. 
The songs of a social character composed prior to that period 
embrace Mon Habit (My Coat) ; Ma Vocation; Les Hiron- 
delles (The Swallows), a favorite with the French soldiers in 
Algiers; Le Grenier (The Garret) ; Le Dieu des bonnes gens; 
Le vieux sergent; La Grand-Mere. Some of his love songs are 
lewd and vulgar. His satirical songs include : Les Enfants de 
la France; La^ Cocarde blanche (The White Cockade), di- 
rected against the royalist banquet celebrating the anniversary 
of the entry of the allied forces into Paris; Nabuchodonosor, 
a formidable mockery of Louis XVIII; Le Marquis de Cara- 
bas, and La Saint e- Alliance barbaresque. 

Beranger was the most inspired of the panegyrists of 
Napoleon I; he glorified the Petit Caporal in many songs, 
and thus created a veritable Napoleon Cult. The titles of 

1 My songs are myself. 
The people, that's my muse. 

396 



THE HUMORISTS AND THE SATIRISTS 

some of these famous chansons are : Les souvenirs du peuple; 
Le cinq mai; II n'est pas mort; Le vieux drapeau (The oldt 
flag) ; Les deux grenadiers. Perhaps the most touching of 
them all is the one on the return of the exiled Napoleon to 
France : 

France adoree! 

Douce contree! 
Puissent tes fils te revoir ainsi tous! 

Enfin j 'arrive, 

Et sur la rive 
Je rends au ciel, je rends grace a genoux. 

Beranger composed a bewildering variety of chansons. 1 
We mention a few more titles: Roger Bontemps; Jeanne la 
Rousse (Red-haired Joan) ; Les Gueux (The Beggars) ; Les 
Adieux de Marie Stuart; Le J uif -Errant (The Wandering 
Jew) ; and finally La Saint e- Alliance, which begins with the 
beautiful lines : 

J'ai vu la Paix descendre sur la terre, 

Semant de Tor, des fleurs et des epis. 
L'air etait calme, et du dieu de la guerre 

Elle Stouffait les foudres assoupis. 
Ah! disait-elle, egaux par la vaillance, 

Francais, Anglais, Beige, Russe ou Germain, 
Peuples, formez une sainte alliance, 

Et donnez-vous la main. 

During the Restoration, Beranger attacked the policy of 
the Bourbons, and worked assiduously for their downfall. 
With this purpose he chose the greatest of all weapons, satire ; 
for there are many who 

Safe from the bar, the pulpit, and the throne, 
Are touched and shamed by ridicule alone. 

For these attacks he was twice imprisoned and fined, once 

1 At his death, in 1857, he left, in addition to his biography, some ninety 
unpublished songs. 

397 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

on account of the song, L'Enrhume, in which two dotted lines 
were sufficient to convict him of lese-majeste : 

Mais la Charte encor nous defend; 
Du roi c'est rimmortel enfant. 
II Taime, ou le presume. 



Amis, c'est la, 
Oui, c'est cela, 
C'est cela qui m'enrhume. 

His last sentence of imprisonment was for nine months, 
with the additional penalty of ten thousand francs' fine; but 
this only seemed to heighten his popularity. His punishment 
was transformed into a veritable triumph : the great men 
of the day came to pay him homage in his prison; Victor 
Hugo, Dumas, de Vigny, and his many more obscure admirers 
sent him delicacies; the young people of France opened a 
subscription which in a few days was sufficient to pay the 
fine. His imprisonment, far from intimidating him, inspired 
him to launch his bitterest satire against the enemy from 
within his prison walls, and the people applauded his courage. 

Beranger several times refused the offer of membership 
in the French Academy. He seemed to prefer the atmosphere 
of the Caveau, a Parisian literary and convivial club of which 
Desaugiers was the president. 1 The majority of French critics 
do not acknowledge Beranger as a poet of the first rank; the 
English critic, Saintsbury, is disposed to ridicule the critical 
French attitude of grudging appreciation of Beranger. He 
" was not in the least a literary poet/' says Professor Saints- 
bury. ' ' But there is room in literature for other than merely 
literary poets, and among these Beranger will always hold a 
very high place.' ' His songs thrilled the multitude, and for 
many years after his death, in 1857, he was the idol of the 
people, whose emotions he so characteristically expressed. 

Paul-Louis Courier de Mere (1722-1825), the wittiest and 

1 This club, founded in 1729 by Piron, the elder O6billon, Colle, and 
others, was dissolved in 1739 and reorganized some twenty years later by 
Pelletier, the younger Crebillon, Marmontel, and their companions. 

398 



THE HUMORISTS AND THE SATIRISTS 

most gifted prose writer and a defender of liberal ideas, 
reached middle age before he discovered that he had a genius 
for political satire. When this was fully established by his 
Petition aux deux Chambres, descriptive of the crimes of the 
" White Terror/' 1 he published pamphlet after pamphlet 
against the government of the Restoration — pouring into the 
wounds made by Beranger the salt of his own biting prose. 
His style, of marvelous simplicity and directness, and glit- 
tering with epigrams, was that of the Satire Menippee; he 
had the wit of Rabelais, the irony of Junius. Courier had 
served in the army under Napoleon, but during the Restora- 
tion he resigned his commission to engage in farming on his 
little estate at Yeretz in Touraine. It was under the name of 
Paul-Louis, vigneron (wine grower) that he issued his most 
sensational pamphlet, the Simple Discours, in criticism of the 
national project to present the Chateau de Chambord to the 
Due de Bordeaux. The effect of Courier's telling style is height- 
ened by the form in which this pamphlet is cast — the author 
representing himself ingenuously as a peasant arguing political 
questions with his fellows. It cost Courier two months in jail 
at Sainte-Pelagie, where he spent some happy days in company 
with Beranger, composing another satire concerning the ex- 
penses of his trial. His other productions of this kind in- 
clude the famous Pamphlet des pamphlets and his Petition 
a la Chambre des Deputes pour les villageois qu'on empeche de 
danser. His immensely clever and popular letters embrace 
the Lettre a M. Benouard, on the subject of a mutilated manu- 
script; the Conversation chez la duchesse d' Albany; and the 
Aventure en Calabre, comprised in a letter to Madame 
Pigalle. Under the last of these titles is related the thrilling 
adventures of himself and a companion housed overnight with 
some peasants of a village in the kingdom of Naples : Courier 
and his comrade are overcome with terror when their host, in 
the middle of the night, ascends a ladder to their room, and, 
with a large knife in his hand, stealthily approaches their bed 
— in order to cut down a ham that happens to be hanging 
above them. 

1 The Terreur blanche was a term applied to the period of excesses com- 
mitted by the Royalists during the first years of the Restoration. 

399 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

It was the opinion of Sainte-Beuve that Courier would 
endure as a rare and unique example in French literature. 

Auguste Barbier (1805-82), a young poet of little repu- 
tation, ''awoke to find himself famous " with the publication 
of his satires entitled Iambes. 1 These appeared in 1831, a 
year after the July Revolution. Brilliant in rhetoric and 
pungent with a satire worthy of Juvenal, the poems made a 
tremendous sensation; nothing comparable to them had been 
produced in France. The Iambes were directed against Louis- 
Philippe, and exposed the corruption and weakness of the 
government. In all, there are nineteen of these poems. La 
Curee satirizes the office-seeking courtiers who waxed rich 
under the new government without having taken part in the 
war. La Curee is a striking picture of the corruption of 
Paris, Melpomene an eloquent censure of the debaucheries that 
dishonored the theater at this time. In L'Idole, Barbier bit- 
terly attacks Napoleon I upon the occasion of the erection of 
his statue on the Colonne Vendome. He calls him a scourge 
of God — a figure in striking contrast to the Napoleon defined 
by most of the celebrated writers of the beginning of the cen- 
tury. Barbier 's hatred of the emperor finds intense expres- 
sion in these lines of L 'I dole : 

Eh bien! Dans tous ces jours d'abaissement, de peine, 
Pour tous ces outrages sans nom, 
Je n'ai jamais charge qu' un etre de ma haine. . . . 
Sois maudit, 6 Napoleon! 

Some of his other poems, notably II Pianto, in which he 
bewails the political misfortunes of Italy, and Lazare, which 
depicts the misery of the English people, contain beautiful 
lines; but Barbier did not again attain the height of his 
Iambes, of which Nettement says: " Never had French poetry 
shown that cynical boldness of representation and that brutal 
energy of expression which live in this democratic maledic- 
tion.' ' 

1 Iambics, a metrical form first employed in Greece as the verse most 
appropriate to satire. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE MODERN NOVEL 

The astonishing growth of the novel in the nineteenth cen- 
tury proceeded in a great measure from the desire of the 
French people, weary of political strife, for some form of lit- 
erary relaxation. The response to that desire found its first 
expression in the portrayal of the ideal; this, in turn, led to 
the study of morals and manners and an analysis of the human 
heart: hence the novels of realism, of naturalism, and of 
psychology. The surpassing exponent of idealistic fiction was 
a woman — George Sand. She possessed a rich inventive fac- 
ulty and keen powers of observation, and while her gift of 
fancy conducted her into the realm of the ideal, she did not 
fall into the exaggerations of the romantic school. A writer 
of extraordinary powers, she had an innate love for nature 
and humanity ; within her peculiar province she was a master 
of French prose. 

Aurore Dupin (George Sand) was born at Paris in 1804. 
She was the great-granddaughter of Maurice de Saxe. 1 On the 
death of her father, the young Aurore, from the age of four 
years, was brought up in the country, at the chateau of No- 
hant, in Berri, by her grandmother, Madame Dupin de Fran- 
cueil. Free from all constraint, and subject to no surveillance, 
she divided her time between long trips in the fields and 
the books which she chose for herself. When she was thirteen 
years old, Madame Dupin de Francueil, frightened at the ig- 

1 Maurice de Saxe, son of Augustus II and the Countess Konigsmarken, 
left his country on account of a political quarrel; he served France and 
became Marechal de Saxe. George Sand's father, Maurice Dupin, 
served with distinction under the Republic and the Empire; her mother 
was a woman inferior to him in position and intellect, but whom he married, 
in spite of the lively opposition of his family. 

27 401 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATUR. 

norance and rustic manners of her granddaughter, put her in 
a convent in Paris, where she spent three years. Aurore en- 
rolled herself in the company of certain boarders who were 
called "the devils" — students who defied the authority of 
the Sisters, and refused to work. At the end of a year, how- 
ever, she became tired of "deviltry," and began to like the 
pious exercises, and even entertained the idea of becoming a 
nun ; but she left the convent after three years, and returned 
to the Chateau of Nohant, where she resumed the wayward 
habits of her childhood. Under her tutor's direction she 
began to read the principal works of Mably, Locke, Bacon, 
Montesquieu, J. 'J. Rousseau, Aristotle, Leibnitz, Pascal, 
Montaigne; and to devour, without method, the poems of 
Pope, Milton, Dante, Shakespeare, Byron. Her literary talent 
proceeds from these authors ; personal inspiration has added to 
it a stamp of originality. As her mind expanded, the freedom 
of her tastes led her into eccentric ways; she began to dress 
like a boy, with cloth trousers and leather gaiters, in order 
to be able to ride with greater comfort. Her studies soon 
took a turn as masculine as her pleasures; a young student 
of medicine supplied her with human arms, heads and legs, 
and for a long time she kept a skeleton in her room. Her ec- 
centric charms, her mysterious studies, her merry, free, and 
easy relations with young people, all this scandalized the in- 
habitants of La Chatre, and bred the storm of calumnies 
which was to break upon her later in life. When her grand- 
mother died, Mademoiselle Dupin went to live with her moth- 
er in Paris, where she suffered keenly from the social and in- 
tellectual inferiority of her environment. She was soon mar- 
ried to the baron Casimir Dudevant; but this union was not 
na PPy> and she separated from him. Madame Dudevant, with 
her husband's consent, lived sometimes in Paris with her 
daughter, and sometimes at Nohant with her son; but her 
means were very limited, and she had recourse to several ex- 
pedients to increase her income. In order to economize, she 
once more donned the male costume, 1 in which she could 

1 This so-called "male costume" is said to have consisted in a long coat 
such as any woman might wear, hair cut short and a round felt hat which 
gave her, at a distance, the appearance of a man. 

402 



THE MODERN NOVEL 

mingle with the crowds who witnessed the presentation 
of the first Romantic dramas, and in which she could 
frequent the streets of the Latin quarter, at night, 
together with its happy inhabitants. At this time 
she was twenty-eight years old. At first she made trans- 
lations; then she began to do portraits in crayon and in 
water color. Finally, she tried literature, but met with little 
encouragement: an old novelist, to whom she had been re- 
ferred, told her dryly that a woman should not write. Balzac, 
to whom she was introduced, paid no great attention to her 
projects. Latouche gave her a place on the editorial staff of 
Le Figaro, with indifferent results. It was then that she met, 
in the offices of the newspaper, a young writer, Jules Sandeau, 
who collaborated with her in a romance, Rose et Blanche, 
under the pseudonym of ' ' Jules Sand. ' ' This was a success, 
and an editor asked " Jules Sand " for a new novel. Madame 
Dudevant submitted the manuscript of a novel which was hers 
alone; but the publisher clung to the pseudonym in order to 
assure the success of the book. Latouche arranged the diffi- 
culty by bestowing on the authoress the name of Sand, with 
the privilege of adding to it whatever name should please her ; 
and so the novel, Indiana, was published under the name of 
George Sand. It created a sensation even amid the victories 
of Romanticism ; a new talent had appeared stamped with an 
individual style and infused with idealism and feeling. In 
Indiana she uttered a passionate protest against marriage as it 
is contracted in a badly organized society. The story was a 
popular success; and the same year saw the appearance of 
Valentine, which contains touching situations and a delicate 
analysis of character, and likewise attacks the institution of 
marriage. Lelia, which is less a novel than a kind of philo- 
sophic poem, was written in an hour of discouragement. After 
her break with de Musset in Italy, George Sand published her 
impressions of the journey in the Lettres d'un voyageur, 
which made a great stir. Jacques, Andre, Le Secretaire in- 
time, Leone Leoni, Mauprat, Lavinia, etc., are novels that be- 
long to her initial period of productiveness — that of passion 
in its first outbreak. Lelia dominates all her works of this 
period, which ends with the Lettres d'un voyageur. 

The second phase of George Sand 's genius and ideas is ex- 

403 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

pressed in her activities during the succeeding eight years. 
It is the period in which she entered into relations with emi- 
nent men whose social and religious ideas she could adorn by 
the marvelous power of her imagination and the eloquence 
of her style. She, in her turn, became a philosopher and 
socialist. Under the influence of the Abbe de Lamennais, who 
had turned democrat, she wrote Le Compagnon du tour de 
France (The Itinerant Journeyman), in which a workingman 
marries a young girl of the aristocratic class. The ideas of 
Pierre Leroux on the rebirth of souls in new bodies, for the 
achievement of progress, recur in Spiridion and the Sept 
cordes de la lyre. Le Meunier d'Angibault (The Miller of 
Angibault) is almost communistic, and in the Peche de M. 
Antoine (The Transgression of M. Antoine) George Sand 
preaches the socialistic theories of Charles Fourier. Her 
musical preoccupations and the mystic Czech compositions 
of Chopin may be recognized in her novels Consuelo and La 
Comtesse de Rudolstadt, which are full of surprise and mys- 
tery. During her romantic liaison with Chopin, she took him 
to Majorca for his health, and cared for him there. While in 
Spain, she was often obliged to perform the most arduous 
household duties, on account of the impossibility of obtaining 
domestic service, such was the hatred of the Spaniards for the 
French, kept alive by the clergy, because Napoleon had abol- 
ished the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Spain. 1 The revolu- 
tion of 1848 interrupted her democratic and social propaganda 

1 Napoleon suppressed feudal taxation and feudal rights. He held that 
the priests ought to limit themselves to guiding the conscience, without 
exercising any other jurisdiction. Conquered Spain was mute; but the 
Inquisition answered with this catechism: Tell me, my child, who are you? 
A Spaniard by the grace of God. — What do you mean by that? An honest 
man. — Who is the enemy of our happiness? The Emperor of the French. — 
How many natures has he? Two: the human nature and the diabolic. — 
How many emperors of the French are there? One real emperor in three 
deceptive persons. — What are their names? Napoleon, Murat, and 
Manuel Godoy. — Which of the three is the most wicked? They are all 
three equally so. — Whence does Napoleon come? From sin. — Whence is 
Murat derived? From Napoleon. — Whence does Godoy originate? From 
the formation of these two. — What is the spirit of the first? Pride and 
despotism. — Of the second? Rapine and cruelty. — Of the third? Cupid- 
ity, treason, and ignorance. — What are the French? Former Christians 

404 



THE MODEKN NOVEL 

and George Sand wrote some political works. But this period 
was of short duration, and she soon returned to her country 
place at Nohant (Berri), and began to describe the customs 
and the passions of the peasants who surrounded her. These 
descriptions evidenced an incomparable freshness combined 
with ease and simplicity of style, and revealed a genius for 
the idyl. Here she wrote Frangois le Champi (Francis the 
Foundling) ; Les Maitres Sonneurs (The Master Bellringers) ; 
La Petite Fadette, and La Mare au DiaMe (The Devil's Pool) 
— a sketch of rural life that almost attains the simple beauty 
of the antique. 

George Sand, in ten volumes, told the story of her past 
life in Histoire de ma vie and in File et Lui, a novel 
which caused a stir because Lui was considered to be Al- 
fred de Musset, who had just died. The brother of de Musset 
replied in a cruel pamphlet : Lui et Elle. Madame Dudevant 
now entered on the third period of her literary career. It 
embraced : Jean de la Roche; Yalvedre, the counterpart 
of Indiana; La Confession d f une jeune fille; Mademoiselle de 
la Quintinie, a novel of religious discussion in reply to Sibylle 
by Octave Feuillet; Malgre tout (In spite of all) ; Cesarine 
Dietrich; Sceur Jeanne, etc. These novels are purely romantic. 

The best drama by George Sand is the Marquis de Ville- 
mer, which she drew from her novel of the same name. Her 
other plays include Claudie; La Petite Fadette; Le Manage 
de Victorine; Les Beaux Messieurs de Boisdore. During the 
last years of her life she gave another proof of her versatility 
in the pleasing fairy tales, La Reine Coax and Le Nuage Rose 
(The Pink Cloud). Her old age was very peaceful and 
happy. She was of an amiable, optimistic nature, incapable 
of meanness, always protecting the weak and needy. She died 
in 1876 at her castle of Nohant, known to the people far and 
wide as la bonne dame de Nohant. A fine statue of George 
Sand, by Clesinger, decorates the entrance hall of the Theatre- 
Frangais in Paris. 

who have become heretics. — Is it a sin to put a Frenchman to death? No, 
father, we win heaven by killing one of these dogs of heretics. — What 
punishment does a Spaniard deserve who fails in this duty? Death and 
the infamy of a traitor. — What will deliver us from our enemies? Con- 
fidence in ourselves and in our arms. 

405 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

George Sand's literary fertility is almost past belief. She 
wrote eighty novels, twenty plays, ten volumes of the His- 
toire de ma vie, the travels in Italy and Majorca, besides 
dialogues, stories, society comedies. Yet in the forty-four 
years of her literary life her powers did not deteriorate. 

Apropos of the letters of de Musset and herself, George 
Sand wrote to Sainte-Beuve : "A true story, which perhaps 
masks the folly of one and the affection of the other — the 
folly of both, if you wish ; but nothing odious or cowardly in 
our hearts, nothing which might stain sincere souls. " 

She wrote to de Musset: " Ascend to God on the rays of 
your genius, and send your muse to earth to tell men the 
mysteries of love and faith." 

Musset wrote to her: "Be a brother, my great and good 
George. You have made a man of a child; where would I be 
without you, my love? Look where you took me, and where 
you left me. How you took me by the hand to replace me 
on my path. . . . Think of that; I have but you." 

Jules Sandeau (1811-83), who began by collaborating 
with George Sand, is the author of some twenty novels of 
provincial life, wholesome in theme and treatment, and dra- 
matic in structure. It was from one of these that the ad- 
mirable comedy, Le Gendre de Monsieur Poirier, was adapted 
by Augier. The greater number of Sandeau 's novels ap- 
peared originally in the Revue des Deux-Mondes and other 
periodicals; among them are: Mademoiselle de la Seigliere, 
Valcreuse, Madame de Sommerville, Le Docteur Herbaut, 
Catherine, La Maison de Penarvan. Sandeau became a mem- 
ber of the Academy in 1858. 

Dumas pere, Sue, and Soulie were the principal repre- 
sentatives of those Romanticists, called " les violents," whose 
special achievement was dramatic effect and the portrayal 
of exaggerated passion. 

Alexandre Dumas, the elder, is without doubt the most 
productive of modern novelists; he is also celebrated as a 
dramatic author. Born in 1803 at Villers-Cotterets, he was 
the son of a general of the Republic, and the grandson of 
a negress. His preliminary education was very incomplete. 
When he came to Paris at the age of twenty to seek his for- 
tune, he made application to General Foy, then a member of 

406 



THE MODERN NOVEL 

the Chamber of Deputies. The general questioned him con- 
cerning his abilities, and the conversation was pretty much as 
follows: "First, I must know for what you are fitted." 
" Oh, not for very much! " — " "Well, what do you know? 
A little mathematics? " " No, General." — " You have, at 
least, some notion of geometry and physics? " "No, General." 
— " You know Latin and Greek? " " Very little."—" Then 
perhaps you have some knowledge of bookkeeping? " " Not 
the least in the world." — " Give me your address," the Gen- 
eral said, in desperation, " and I shall try to think of some- 
thing for you to do." Dumas wrote his address. " We are 
safe ! ' ' the general exclaimed, clapping his hands. ' ' You 
write beautifully." So he got Dumas a clerkship, at twelve 
hundred francs, in the house of the Duke of Orleans. Refer- 
ring to this interview with General Foy, Dumas used to say : 
' ' At each question, I felt the blood rushing to my head ; it was 
the first time I had been put face to face with my ignorance. ' ' 

Conscious of his defective education, Dumas spent his 
evenings in learning the dead languages, and in reading the 
principal works of French literature. After three years of 
arduous and persistent toil, he tried his hand as a writer by 
publishing a volume of Nouvelles and several plays. His 
first dramatic success was the performance, at the Theatre- 
Francais, of his Henri III et sa cour, an historical drama 
in prose. Its initial presentation was a literary event, as it 
expressed a reaction against the classic traditions of the old 
tragedy. Quite new to the French theater was his employ- 
ment of historical personages, of scenes of brutal violence, of 
the fashions and furnishings of the period represented in the 
play. During the ensuing ten years he wrote twenty-two 
dramas, mostly in five acts. Four were in verse ; one, in nine- 
teen scenes, pictured the whole life of Napoleon I. 

Among his dramatic works are : La Tour de Nesle; Richard 
Darlington; Le Mari de la veuve; Teresa; Catherine Howard; 
Caligula; TJn Mariage sous Louis XV; Mademoiselle de Belle- 
Isle; and Antony, his most brilliant success during this first 
period of his productivity. The titular hero of Antony — 
grave, mysterious, always armed with a poignard, always a 
prey to his exalted sentiments — was accepted, for the moment, 
as the type of fashionable youth. This Antony is a foundling 

407 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

(but not a poverty-stricken foundling) who, on returning 
from a journey, finds the woman he loves married to another. 
He pursues her, compromises her honor, and ends by stabbing 
her to save her reputation. In La Tour de Nesle, the in- 
terest centers in a young man who succeeds in escaping from a 
sack in which he was inclosed and thrown into the river. The 
situations are theatrical, and disclose as the instigators of the 
attempted murder, the wife and sisters-in-law of King Louis 
X, "the Quarreler." 

Dumas traveled for a time in foreign lands, and recorded 
his impressions of these travels in Impressions de Voyage; 
La Suisse; Au midi de la France; Les Bords du Bhin; Vltalie; 
I'Es-pagne; I'Afrique; De Paris a Astrakan; Le Caucase. 
But his fancy carried him too far ; and these tales of a traveler 
cannot be taken seriously. 

Dumas fairly flooded France and the rest of Europe with 
his novels. Equipped with a boundless fancy, a fertile in- 
vention, and a facility for the delineation of uncommon and 
piquant situations and events, he fascinated the fiction read- 
ers of all nations. Yet his novels are prolix, often contain- 
ing explanatory passages of great length; were it not for his 
magic in making the impossible plausible, and in throwing a 
glamour over characters that bear little relation to life, his 
tales would fall to the level of Munchausen's. As R. L. Ste- 
venson has aptly remarked: " The bony fist of the showman 
visibly propels them, their bellies are stuffed with bran; and 
yet we eagerly partake of their adventures." Most of these 
novels first appeared in the feuilletons of the great Paris 
dailies ; often Dumas published three or four of them at once 
in as many different journals, so that at the end of the year 
they filled fifty or sixty volumes. Their familiar titles in- 
clude : Les Trois Mousquetaires ; Vingt ans apres ; Le Vicomte 
de Bragelonne; x Le Comte de Monte-Cristo; La Beine Margot; 
Le Chevalier de Maison-Bouge. Les Trois Mousquetaires and 
Monte-Cristo contributed chiefly to the author's popularity 
and fortune. Monte-Cristo especially has enjoyed a constant 

1 Les Trois Mousquetaires, original edition, 1844, in eight volumes. 
Vingt ans apres, original edition, 1845, in ten volumes. Le Vicomte de 
Bragelonne, original edition, 1848-50, in twenty-six volumes. 

408 



THE MODERN NOVEL 

vogue the world over, and is still devoured, even in the trans- 
lated versions, by countless persons who read books only to 
be amused. As for Les Trois Mousquetaires, who that reads 
at all does not know D 'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis 2 
These stories, with the others in the series, are pure tales of 
adventure; whatever their faults, the author had a trick of 
compelling the attention that none of his numerous imitators 
has quite succeeded in acquiring. Altogether, the novels of 
Dumas brought him an income of nearly two hundred 
thousand francs, which was quickly consumed in ostenta- 
tious follies. His chateau of Monte-Cristo cost him fabulous 
sums; he spent money without reckoning. Hence he had to 
write continuously; and he wrote too much: that was his 
mistake and the source of his faults. He abused his life 
and his robust constitution, and left nothing of very high 
value. Often his novels, after appearing first as feuilletons 
and then in book form, were cut up into scenes and staged as 
interminable dramas. One of them, Monte-Cristo, was pro- 
longed through two evenings. 

Dumas drew liberally upon French history, and, though he 
did not pretend to adhere to historical facts, many ill-ad- 
vised readers have gone to his pages for instruction. The his- 
torical novel, it is perhaps needless to say, is more likely to 
confuse than to assist the student of epochs gone by; in the 
case of Dumas it is not even germane to literature. In his 
Memoir es d'un Medecin he has given us a portrait of the char- 
latan Cagliostro, together with the story of Marie- Antoinette 's 
famous necklace. A royalist novel, Le Chevalier de Maison- 
Eouge, supplied the Revolution of 1848 with its republican 
song, Mourir pour la patrie! — which has become a second 
Marseillaise. This revolution, of which Dumas was a warm 
partisan, wrecked his fortune. In 1860 he took part in the 
expedition of Garibaldi, and was present at the battles he 
described. In the midst of his travels he did not cease to have 
his drama played, and to publish novels in feuilleton and in 
book form. To cap his activities, he wrote an amusing and 
useful work on cooking. 

Our astonishment at seeing such a prodigious number of 
works — often three or four at a time — issue from the brain 
of a single man is modified when his method is explained. 

409 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The secret was disclosed during the progress of a lawsuit 
against two Parisian journals which he had agreed to supply 
with stories. It transpired that he was not the sole author of 
his tales, but that he employed anonymous collaborators or 
secretaries, whose writings he recast. Dumas defended his 
course in this respect by saying that he relied on his assistants 
only for the rough sketch of the work, to which he himself 
gave the finishing touches. E. de Mirecourt exposed him in 
his pamphlets, Le Mercantilisme litteraire, and Fabrique de 
Romans: Maison Dumas et Compagnie. It was facetiously 
remarked that no one had ever read Dumas 's entire works — 
not even Dumas himself. Indeed, Dumas is reported as saying 
of a book which bears his name : " I signed it, but I have not 
read it." There have likewise been revelations of audacious 
plagiarisms of works by Schiller, Sir Walter Scott, Chateau- 
briand, and others. But Dumas justified himself on the theory 
that " the man of genius does not steal, but conquers." And 
after all the Les Trois Mousquetaires remains one of the most 
popular works in the literature of all nations. 

Frederic Soulie is the author of some thirty sensational 
novels. A characteristic product of his gloomy imagination 
is his Memoires du diable, in which Satan, disclosing the secrets 
of men 's lives, reveals the vices of those reputed virtuous, and 
the virtues of those reputed vicious. Of his plays, La Closerie 
des Genets ,(1846) conveys a faithful picture of Breton 
customs. 

Marie Joseph Sue (1804-57), best known as Eugene Sue 
— a pen name borrowed from his sponsor, Prince Beauharnais 
— was also a contributor of the feuilleton novel. He tried the 
practice of medicine with indifferent success, toyed for a time 
with art, and for six years found employment as a surgeon in 
the navy. Sue's own father, before him, was a simple ship's 
doctor. Yet the author of Le Juif Errant (The Wandering 
Jew), who took to novel writing almost by accident, could not 
at first forget that his patroness was the Empress Josephine. 
Some of his earlier works — Arthur, Mathilde, Le Marquis de 
Letoriere — are imbued with the aristocratic spirit; they sig- 
nalize, moreover, the triumph of evil. Later, he experienced 
a change of heart, and became a social democrat. We note a 
corresponding increase in his fortunes : to name one instance, 

410 



THE MODERN NOVEL 

Le Juif Errant (1845) alone brought him two hundred thou- 
sand francs. The imaginative qualities of this tale have given 
it a certain vitality ; though in its grotesque exaggerations, in 
order to support his anti- Jesuitical thesis, the author's imag- 
ination outran his art. His Les Mysteres de Paris (1843) — 
an offense to common sense and sound moral sentiment — ap- 
peared, curiously enough, in the dignified Journal des Debats, 
and was devoured alike by persons of high and low degree. 

Three prolific writers who have met with great pecuniary 
success are Paul de Kock (1794-1871), who reveled in 
descriptions of the seamy side of lower middle-class life 
in Paris; Hector Malot, whose Sans famille circulated 
throughout Europe; and Georges Ohnet. The last-named 
novelist (born in Paris, 1848) is what our American pub- 
lishers would call a " best seller.' ' His popularity, extend- 
ing to Germany, and emphasized by the dramatization of 
his fictions, has long been a thorn in the side of French literary 
critics. Jules Lemaitre remarks : ' ' II a 1 'elegance des chromo- 
lithographes, la noblesse des sujets de pendule, les effets de 
cuisse des cabotins, le sentimentalisme des romances ' ' * — damn- 
ing specifications of literary infamy which lose their flavor in 
an English translation. Meanwhile, Le Maitre de forges 
thrives on Lemaitre 's excoriation with 250,000 copies sold; 
while Serge Panine; Lise Fleuron; La Comtesse Sarah, and 
Le Docteur Rameau have all helped toward enriching their 
author. 

The great popularity in France of Le Roman d'un Jeune 
Homme Pauvre, by Octave Feuillet (1821-90), has not served 
to strengthen him in the esteem of his more critical country- 
men; just as in our own country its repute as a classic for 
young ladies has perhaps distracted attention from Feuillet 's 
more robust productions. The favor, still enjoyed, among 
French women by this optimistic romancier mondain is 
not without warrant. Feuillet knew fashionable society, and 
recorded his observations of it in a good and facile literary 
style. He had, moreover, his moments of power. His works 

1 " He has the elegance of a chromolithograph, the nobleness of a figure 
on a (French) clock, the poses of a cheap actor, the mawkishness of senti- 
mental songs." 

411 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

include Scenes et Comedies, patterned after Musset; Dalila; 
Le Pour et le Contre; Sibylle — to which George Sand replied 
with Mademoiselle de La Quintinie. In two of his later and 
better novels — Julia de Trecoeur and M. de Camors — he leans 
to realism. 

Joseph Xavier Saintine (1798-1865), whose real name was 
Boniface, earned the croix d'honneur and the Montyon prize 
of three thousand francs with his novel, Picciola — the story 
of a prisoner who found comfort in fostering a flower blossom- 
ing in a crevice of his cell. He collaborated with Scribe in 
some two hundred plays. 

Henri Monnier (1799-1877), who, in the domain of carica- 
ture and satire, wielded the pen and brush with equal facility, 
is remembered as the creator of the celebrated Joseph Prud- 
homme {Memoir es de M. Joseph Prudhomme) — the modern 
type of a self-satisfied nonentity ; pompous, arrogant, trite, and 
vulgar of speech. Monnier 's Scenes Populaires contain true 
and witty pictures of Parisian life. 

Edmond About (1828-85), novelist, playwright, and 
journalist, has been called the greatest blagueur of modern 
times. He studied archaeology in Athens, and upon his return 
to France published La Grece contemporaine, a satire on the 
morals and manners of the Greeks — followed, a year later, 
by his best novel, Le Roi des montagnes, in which he de- 
scribed with infinite drollery the banditti of modern Greece. 
L 'Homme a Voreille cassee; Tolla; Le Nez d J un notaire, are 
among his other novels. His dramatic pieces, most of which 
were included in the collection, Theatre impossible, are of no 
great consequence. He was a brilliant journalist, and founded, 
with Sarcey, Le XlXme Siecle — the most humorous French 
journal of the period. 

Emile Erckmann (born 1822) and Alexandre Chatrian 
(1826-90), collaborators under the name of Erckmann- 
Chatrian, deserve passing mention for their novels of the 
Revolutionary and first Napoleonic period — including Madame 
Therese and Le Consent de 1813 — in which they protested 
against the horrors of war; and for their plays, including 
L'Ami Fritz; Les Bantzau, and other adaptations from their 
tales., chiefly concerned with Alsace. 

Emile Souvestre (1806-36), whose Vn Philosophe sous les 

412 



THE MODERN NOVEL 

toits won him recognition from the Academy, has, in Les 
derniers Bretons, his best novel, left us some delightful descrip- 
tions of the legendary Armorica. His novels, written in a 
graceful style and thoroughly wholesome, voiced a virile pro- 
test against the greed and heartlessness of a time when the cry 
was everywhere Enrichissez-vous! 

Jules Verne (1828-1905) has happily commingled scientific 
knowledge with the fancy of the novelist; and though his 
works cannot be taken very seriously as literature, their in- 
genuity, and their complete success within the intention of 
the author, cannot be denied. Verne, it may be said, had the 
scientific imagination. Employing this with no little skill, 
and refraining from a too great distortion of fact, he succeeded 
in anticipating some of our " modern improvements." A 
multitude of young people have been vastly entertained, and 
not unprofitably, by Le Voyage au centre de la terre; Cinq 
semaines en ballon; Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours; 
De la terre a la lune, etc. 

Of Henry Greville (Madame Alice Durand), born in 1842, 
and long a resident in Russia, it is perhaps sufficient to note 
that she wrote a number of novels (Dosia; Suzanne; Cephise, 
etc.), mostly concerned with Russian " high life," that were 
accounted attractive in their day. 

Victor Cherbuliez (1825-99), a Genevan by birth, and dis- 
tantly related to J. J. Rousseau, brought back from the Orient 
a fund of archaeological information which he put forth in 
the form of novels — among them, A propos d f un cheval and 
Un Cheval de Phidias. He also attempted a kind of philo- 
sophical fiction. His output was copious — a part of it of 
considerable merit, but revealing a higher talent for disserta- 
tion than for creation. Samuel Brohl et Cie; Le Roman d } une 
Honnete Femme; La Bete; Le Comte Kostia, are character- 
istic. Cherbuliez was elected a member of the Academy in 
1881. 

Andre Theuriet (born at Marly, 1833, died 1907) pub- 
lished in 1867 a volume of poems, Le Chemin du bois, for 
which the Academy bestowed upon him the Vitel prize. 
Twenty years later he became an Academician. Theuriet lived 
in the country for upward of thirty years, and it is the coun- 
try that inspired not only his poems, but the numerous novels 

413 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

which he began to write when he was approaching middle age. 
These tales, written in a melodious style, and portraying the 
gentler emotions and aspects of rural life, are restful in the 
reading. " His novels in general," says a French critic, " are 
not founded on some complicated intrigue. They exhale the 
sweet perfume of new hay and of ripe wheat ; they awaken in 
the reader the memory of the mysterious life of the forest — 
always the same and yet so variant with the change of the 
hour and the season.' ' Some of his principal novels are Toute 
seule; Mademoiselle Guignon; Sauvageonne; Michel Ver~ 
neuil; Rose-Lise Chant eraine (1903). 

In his discourse upon entering the Academy (in 1891 as 
Feuillet's successor), Pierre Loti said that he belonged to no 
school and knew little of the literature of the day. It is, in- 
deed, apparent from his writings that Loti * — whose real name 
is Julien Viaud — has no literary lineage, and that he stands 
apart in the peculiar vehicle he has made his own. An exotic, 
like Chateaubriand and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, his resem- 
blance to these writers is otherwise remote. Born at Rochef ort 
in 1850, he was for many years a naval officer, and gathered 
at first hand, in foreign lands, the impressions he had so ex- 
quisitely inscribed. His literary style is exceedingly simple 
and direct, yet so delicate and elusive in the thought it conveys 
that his stories lose much in the translation. Read in French, 
his tales transport us to the scene of his selection ; and whether 
we fall under the spell of his sensuous sentiment, or, with 
Professor Saintsbury, find it somewhat " rancid," we cannot 
escape the cobweb of illusion that he weaves about us. Loti's 
heroines are, with one exception (Gaud, in Pecheur d'Islande) , 
women of foreign climes: in Aziyade and Les Desenchantes, 
the Turkish beauties screened with jashmah and ferejeh; 
in the captivating Japonneries d'automne and in Madame 
Chrysantheme, the bewildering Japanese. How far this 
Frenchman has succeeded where so many writers have failed, 
in exploring the field of Nippon, may perhaps in some measure 
be inferred from the comment of Laf cadio Hearn, contained in 
a letter published by Mr. Osman Edwards : 

1 His companions nicknamed him thus because of his modesty; the 
Indian flower hides its head under its leaves. 

414 



THE MODERN NOVEL 

" There is not much heart in Loti; but there is a fine 
brain; and there is a nervous system so extraordinary that 
it forces imagination back to the conditions of old Greek life, 
when men had senses more perfect than now. Very possibly 
this Julien Viaud has in his veins the old blood of Magna 
GraBcia. No other literary man living sees and hears and 
smells and thrills so finely as he. . . . As for what he says of 
the Japanese women, it is perfectly impeccably accurate so 
far as it consists of a record of observations of senses. Loti 's 
senses can never err any more than the film on a photographic 
plate with a sensitivity of one hundred. But he keeps to sur- 
faces; his life is surfaces. Almost in the way that some 
creatures have their skeletons outside of themselves instead 
of inside, so his plexuses of feeling are. What the finer 
nature of the Japanese woman is, no man has told. Those 
who know cannot tell: it would be too much like writing 
of the sweetness of one's own sister or mother. One must 
leave it in sacred silence — with a prayer to all the gods. ' ' 

Loti's Ramuntcho is a tragic love idyl suggested to him by 
his long sojourn in the Basque country. L'Exilee contains a 
charming description of Venice. In L'Inde sans les Anglais 
he has dwelt upon those Oriental religions which seem to have 
turned him from his own faith. Mon frere Yves, in which a 
tipsy sailor marries a girl in every port where his ship touches, 
and Pecheur d'Islande, the pathetic tale of a Breton fisherman 
sent to Iceland, are wonderful tales of the sea. 

Anatole Thibaut (born in Paris, 1844), better known as 
Anatole France, is the son of a bookseller, and, when still a 
very young man, began to lay the foundation of his abundant 
literary knowledge by browsing among the bookshops. In 
the '60's we find him associated as a poet with the Parnas- 
siens. Thereafter he developed a prose style of marvelous 
finish and lucidity, and, both as critic and novelist, has es- 
tablished himself among the foremost modern writers of 
France. He was for a long time an idealist drawing upon 
the past for his themes; but, latterly, the life of to-day has 
engaged his subtle and ironic turn of mind, with the result 
that as a realist he is second to none. Anatole France is first 
of all a critic. As he says himself in the Preface to his articles 
collected under the title of La Vie litteraire, criticism is the 

415 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

latest of all literary forms, and will ultimately absorb them 
all. Hence his novels are, not only in the author's attitude 
but in their actual form, more akin to criticism than to fiction 
as we ordinarily understand it. This applies to one of his 
most notable novels, the artistic and admirable La Rotisserie 
de la Reine Pedauque, in which he has evoked the philo- 
sophical and libertine spirit of eighteenth-century Paris. 
Frankly subjective as a critic, he has in his novel Le Crime de 
Sylvestre Bonnard, sketched a portrait of himself. In Tha'is 
he has given his irony full play in a pyschological study of 
the early Christians of Thebes. Le Mannequin d 'osier is a 
piquantly satirical exposition of the France of to-day; L'Orme 
du Mail, a running fire of ironical and witty comment, be- 
longs to the same category. Crainquehille, the simple but 
dramatic story of a wretched huckster of carrots and cabbages, 
was staged with great success at the Theatre Antoine. 

The polymorphous and gifted Jules Lemaitre (born in 
1853) is a bit of a poet, a playwright of some pretensions, a 
writer of agreeable tales, and, above all, an immensely clever 
critic of literature and the drama. His acute and lively Les 
Contemporains (containing his celebrated depreciation of 
Georges Ohnet) and the Impressions de theatre are widely 
quoted, and somewhat variously estimated in respect to their 
value as permanent critical contributions. Among his collected 
tales — characterized by daintiness and delicacy — are Serenus, 
the history of a martyr; Dix contes; Myrrha; Contes d'au- 
jourd'hui. He has written a rather remarkable novel, Les 
Rois. " This writer, Lemaitre/ ' says Gaston Deschamps, " is, 
I believe, with Anatole France, that one among our elders who 
knows best the resources and mischievous tricks of the French 
language. ' ' » 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

Romanticism * ' having been consumed by its own flames, ' ' 
a reaction took place which soon led to realism, by which 
is understood the endeavor to portray life — people, manners, 
conversation — in its everyday aspects, and with a photo- 
graphic accuracy of detail. The master of this new school was 
Balzac ; its other chief representatives were Merimee, Stendhal, 
Flaubert, the Goncourts, and Daudet. f^Mfe* 

Honore de Balzac, born at Tours in 1799, was a brilliant 
and very fertile novelist. Vapereau tells us that at five years 
of age he read the Scriptures, and lost himself with delight in 
their mysterious depths. All books that fell into his hands 
he devoured in a wink. Often at dawn he set out, laden with 
books, with a piece of bread in his pocket, and went into the 
woods, where he read until nightfall. At the College de 
Vendome, which he entered at an early age, he continued to 
give himself up to this passion ; he made it a point to incur the 
punishment of solitary confinement in one of the college rooms, 
in order that he might pursue his reading free from distrac- 
tions and interruption. Endowed with a prodigious memory, 
he retained everything: places, names, faces, the most unim- 
portant things. Disquieting mental phenomena for a time 
arrested the overactivity of his youthful brain. In the chaos 
produced by a myriad of ideas, reason was suddenly threat- 
ened with eclipse; and it became necessary to suspend his 
studies temporarily. Nevertheless, at eighteen, he had already 
taken his degree of bachelor of letters, and was at the same 
time pursuing a course in the Law School of the Sorbonne 
and of the College de France. The father left his son to his 
own resources, because he had wished to make an attorney of 
him, and young Honore refused absolutely to become one, al- 
28 417 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

though he was clerk in a notary 's office for about three years. 
Entering without means into the life of Paris, the young man 
installed himself in a garret, and began to write with eager- 
ness in the midst of his privations. He published several 
mediocre novels, 1 and attempted playwriting, but without 
success; his toil did not even procure him food. So he bor- 
rowed some money from a friend, and speedily lost it in a 
printing enterprise. Finally, after ten years, during which 
he did not let himself be discouraged, he achieved glory. The 
success of Les Chouans 2 showed him that he could depict only 
contemporary institutions and customs; and from that time 
on he devoted himself entirely to this field, choosing preferably 
exceptional lives, observing the least explored quarters of 
Paris and the provincial cities, and bringing from these a 
curious new world filled with moral infirmities, incomplete 
beings, degraded and abandoned types. 

In his Breton novel, Les Chouans, he was under the in- 
fluence of Scott and Cooper. But he came into his own with 
the publication of La Peau de Chagrin — that curious philo- 
sophic study which forms the first of the psychologic trilogy 
completed with Louis Lambert and Seraphita, whose heroine, 
a disciple of the celebrated Swedish mystic, Swedenborg, tells 
what she has seen in heaven and hell. 

Balzac had the habit of locking himself up in his room, 
and spending days and nights in unceasing labor, attired in a 
Dominican's gown. It was his peculiarity to write with the 
aid of a lamp, even in broad day. He retired early, rose 
to work at one o'clock in the night, and took strong coffee 
to keep himself awake and excite his imagination. In six years 
he published more than sixty volumes, of which several are 
masterpieces/ His eccentric method of composition proved too 
expensive for his publishers to bear. He would make a rough 
sketch of a novel, and send it to the printer ; and this process 
he would repeat a dozen, even twenty, times, until the book 
was finished. 3 

1 Under the pseudonym of Lord Roone. 

8 Les Chouans first appeared under the name of Le Dernier Chouan. 

3 This method employed by Balzac is frequently commented upon as 
extraordinary. But if we except his somewhat unusual number of re- 
visions it does not essentially differ from the custom of certain of our 

418 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

The aim of Balzac, in all his novels, was to depict every 
possible phase of the life and manners of the French during 
the first half of the nineteenth century ; and, in accord with an 
all-embracing plan, he gave his works the general title of La 
Comedie Humaine. The novels are classified in eight groups ; 
the first part — Etudes de Mceurs (Studies of Manners) — em- 
braces six series: first, Scenes de la vie privee, twenty-seven 
short stories of which the most famous is La Femme de trente 
ans. Second, Scenes de la vie de province, in which are found 
his most agreeable works. Eugenie Grandet is a delicious and 
original picture of provincial life. The heroine, Eugenie, 
has become the personification of filial devotion, and her father 
the type of the miser. In Le Lys dans la Vallee (The Lily of 
the Valley), one of the few productions of the author written 
with delicacy of feeling, Balzac has described his childhood. 
Third, Scenes de la vie parisienne. These include two of Bal- 
zac's most famous novels: Le Pere Goriot, his masterpiece, an 
exposition of the too indulgent father who sacrifices himself 
for daughters unworthy of his kindness, and Cesar Birotteau 
(Histoire de la grandeur et de la decadence de Cesar Birot- 
teau, parfumeur), in which Balzac exhibits the type of the 
good, but weak man, dazzled by fortune, and the victim of 
false friends. Histoire des Treize and Les Parents pauvres 
are of this series. Fourth, Scenes de la vie de campagne, in- 
cluding Le Medecin de Campagne, one of his principal novels, 
and Les Paysans. Fifth, Scenes de la vie politique. Sixth, 
Scenes de la vie militaire, to which Les Chouans belongs. The 
second part — Serie des etudes philosophiques — embraces La 
Recherche de Vabsohi, in which the alchemist, Balthazar Claes, 
sacrifices his honor and his family to his search for the philoso- 
pher 's stone; together with the psychologic trilogy already 
mentioned. The third part contains the Etudes analytiques 
des grandes et des petites miseres du mariage. 

Balzac also wrote for the theater, but only two of his plays 

contemporary authors, whose rough drafts of a novel are typewritten 
before elaboration. The typewriting machine had not been invented in 
Balzac's time, and so he had recourse to the printer. It was a question of 
the psychology of attention; and Balzac, who like his own Louis Lambert, 
could take in a printed page at a glance, doubtless understood very well 
the immense advantage of revising a manuscript in type. 

419 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

were successful : La Mardtre and Mercadet le faiseur. Apart 
from his novels, but not inferior in art to the very best of 
them, are the gross Contes drolatiques — some thirty short tales 
teeming with vitality and Rabelaisian humor, in which Balzac 
brilliantly reproduced in mediaeval French the sensual manner 
of the sixteenth century. 

Balzac's faculty of poetic invention is greater than that 
of any other French writer; but seldom do we find in any 
one author so much that is admirable in close proximity with 
the mediocre. Of this genius capable of " producing mon- 
strosities as well as masterpieces, ' ' Mr. Henry James remarks : 
" He is one of the finest artists and one of the coarsest. 
Viewed in one way, his novels are ponderous, shapeless, over- 
loaded; his touch is graceless, violent, barbarous. Viewed 
in another, his tales have more color, more composition, more 
grasp of the reader's attention than any other's. Balzac's 
style would demand a chapter apart. It is the least simple 
style, probably, that ever was written; it bristles, it cracks, 
it swells and swaggers; but it is a perfect expression of the 
man's genius. Like his genius, it contains a certain quantity 
of everything, from immaculate gold to flagrant dross. He 
was a very bad writer, and yet unquestionably he was a very 
great writer." 

Balzac was one of the founders of the Societe des gens de 
lettres in France, of which he was called the " Grand 
Marshal." In twenty years he published ninety-seven works. 
M. Taine has thus described his method of composition : ' ' He 
did not set out in the manner of artists, but in that of 
scholars; instead of painting, he dissected. He did not begin 
violently, at the first bound — as did Shakespeare and Saint- 
Simon — in respect to the soul of his characters ; he turned them 
about, patiently, deliberately, like an anatomist — lifting a 
muscle, then a bone, then a vein, then a nerve, coming to the 
brain only after having covered the whole system of organs 
and functions. He described the city, then the street, and the 
house. . . . There was in him something of the archaglogist, 
the architect, the upholsterer, the tailor. . . . These different 
factors of his powers of analysis came one after the other, each 
one reading his report — the most detailed and exact possible ; 
the artist listened scrupulously, laboriously, and his imagina- 

420 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

tion was ignited only after he had accumulated as for a fire 
this elaborate scaffolding of paper scraps. . . . From this 
source arose several defects and several merits : in many places 
he fatigues many people. . . . What is worse, the book be- 
comes obscure; a description is not a painting . . . the enu- 
meration of all the stamens of a flower never puts in our minds 
the image of a flower. . . . But also what power ! what promi- 
nence and what relief this interminable enumeration gives to 
the character! How real he becomes! His characters live; 
they have entered into familiar conversation: Nucingen, 
Kastignac, Philippe Bridau, Phellion, Bixiou, and a hundred 
others, are men whom we have seen, whom we mention to 
give the idea of a certain real person. ' ' Brunetiere tells us : 
* * As a writer Balzac * is not of the ' first rank, ' nor is he 
even of those of Whom it may be said that they receive from 
heaven at their birth the gift of l style. ' . . . 

' ' In attempting to be witty, 2 he often fails to exhibit good 
taste ; in like manner in attempting to display i style, ' he at 
times forgets the proper meanings of words and often the 
rules of grammar, and the very laws of the French syn- 
tax." To the reproach of immorality in Balzac's novels, 
Brunetiere 's apt defense is this : ' l Ought a representation of 
life be more moral than life itself \ For what reasons, in the 
name of what principles? And if it were decided that it 
ought to be, what then would become of that exactness of 
reproduction without which there can be no representation 
of life? " 

Balzac tells us that he created about two thousand char- 
acters; in this, his creative power, he has excelled even Dick- 
ens and Turgenieff. Some French critics are inclined to regard 
his portraits of women as his happiest characterizations, yet 
it must be confessed that his conception of woman's part in 
the terrestrial plan is not flattering, and his women sink into 
insignificance when compared with such masterly creations 

1 Honore de Balzac by Ferdinand Brunetiere, translated by Prof. R. L. 
Sanderson (French Men of Letters series). 

2 "In the role of a man of wit," says Brunetiere, elsewhere, "Balzac is 
downright unbearable, and even Victor Hugo's humor is no heavier than 
Balzac's." 

421 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

as le Pere Goriot, Vautrin, de Rastignac, le Pere Grandet, 
Baron Hulot, etc. (except, however, such a woman as Madame 
Marneffe). 

Money was the great aim of Balzac's life, and he was its 
slave. This consuming ambition appears in his correspond- 
ence, published in 1876, in two large volumes. The majority 
of these letters covering a period of thirty years, are 
addressed to his sister Madame de Surville ; to an Alien, Lettres 
a VEtrangere (Eveline Rzewuska, Countess Hanska, later his 
wife), and to others. To his sister's criticism on Eugenic 
Grandet, he wrote : * ' You tell me there are too many millions 
in Eugenie Grandet. But, foolish one, since the story is true, 
would you have me do better than truth ? ' Balzac was cease- 
lessly occupied with schemes to get rich quick. Having read 
in Tacitus that the Romans had formerly exploited silver 
mines in Sardinia, he borrowed a hundred thousand francs, 
and left Paris on a prospecting trip. During the sea voyage, 
he communicated his idea to the captain of the vessel, who 
found it excellent. On his return to Paris with specimens of 
ore containing a large amount of silver, he applied to the 
government for authority to exploit these mines, only to learn 
that the captain had anticipated him, and supplanted him 
entirely. Then he formed the project of cultivating pine- 
apples, estimating that it would yield him an income of two 
hundred thousand francs ; but this tropical fruit does not ripen 
in France. He also planned to go to Corsica to cultivate 
opium. As further evidence of his failure in practical affairs, 
he insisted on being his own architect for a house he was 
building at Ville-d 'Avray, but when it was completed there 
was no staircase. 

Balzac finally achieved wealth, and was able to marry the 
Countess Hanska, whom he had loved for many years. The 
letters he wrote to her are among the best productions of 
his pen. It is generally supposed to have been a love match, 
for the countess made over her fortune to her children by 
her first husband, but Brunetiere speaks skeptically of this 
" love " match. Balzac writes of the countess in a letter 
to his sister: " Napoleon said we pay for everything here 
below ; nothing is stolen. It seems to me that I have paid very 
little. Twenty-five years of toil and struggle are nothing as 

422 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

the purchase money of an attachment so splendid, so radiant, 
so complete. ' ' Soon afterwards a disease of the heart suddenly 
cut short his career at the age of forty -nine. 

Taine declared this master of the novel to be, after Shake- 
speare and Saint-Simon, the greatest storehouse of documents 
on human nature in existence. Sainte-Beuve writes : * ' How- 
ever rapid and great the success of Balzac in France, it was 
perhaps still greater and more undisputed throughout Europe. 
The details that might be given in regard to this would seem 
fabulous. 1 . . . 

Prosper Merimee (1803-70) — novelist, historian, play- 
wright and scholar — was a sober, precise writer, of a pure and 
vigorous style which is, however, sometimes hard and dry. At 
the time of the struggle between the champions of the classic 
and the romantic schools, he espoused Romanticism, and pub- 
lished his first work, the Theatre de Clara Gazul, comedienne 
espagnole. Merimee represented Clara Gazul as a real person 
— a Spanish actress, persecuted by the clergy of her country, 
and on the point of taking refuge in England. The air of 
reality with which he invested her in this collection of plays 
was heightened by the biographical account he supplied in 
the form of a preface. Clara Gazul was a great success, and 
everybody believed in the existence of the actress. Meri- 
mee was even more successful in La Guzla — a collec- 
tion of so-called Illyrian poems which he said he had 
gathered in Dalmatia, and attributed to an imaginary 
poet, Hyacinthe Maglonorvitch, whose history he duly set 
forth. 

In his Chronique du temps de Charles IX (from which the 
opera of Les Huguenots is drawn) he pictured life and in- 
stitutions during the religious wars. Among his novels and 
shorter stories are found: La Jacquerie, an historical novel 
describing the revolts of the French peasants against the 
nobles in the fourteenth century ; Matteo Falcone, in which a 
Corsican peasant kills his son because he betrayed a fugitive 
concealed in his house; La Venus d'llle; Le Vase etrusque; 
L y Enlevement de la redoute; Carmen, a pathetic and pic- 

1 The lives of his heroes and heroines were emulated, rooms were furnished 
a, la Balzac, etc. 

423 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

turesque novel, upon which Meilhac and Halevy drew for the 
libretto of Bizet's opera. 

Colomba — MerimeVs masterpiece — is a striking picture of 
Corsican life : a story of the revenge pursued by Colomba the 
heroine, with a bitter savagery not unmixed with a strange 
piety. Walter Pater says: " It showed intellectual depth of 
motive, firmly conceived structure, faultlessness of execution, 
vindicating the function of the novel as no tawdry light lit- 
erature, but in very deed a fine art." MerimeVs stories leave 
a sad impression, but they are considered perfect models of 
narrative power. 

Merimee was the head of a Department of the Ministry 
for Foreign Affairs, and, owing to his knowledge of archaeol- 
ogy, occupied the post of inspector of historical monuments. 
During his stay in Spain he was received by Madame de 
Montijo, mother of the future Empress Eugenie; and this 
friendship afterwards gained him admission to the intimate 
circle at the Tuileries. Much valuable information respecting 
the court life of Napoleon III is contained in Merimee 's 
Lettres a une Inconnue — a series of letters addressed to 
Mademoiselle Jenny Dacquin during a period of thirty years. 
His Lettres a une autre Inconnue, addressed to the Countess 
Przedrzerska, cover a period of three years. 

Marie-Henri Beyle (1783-1842), who took the pseudonym 
of Stendhal from the birthplace of the German scientist 
Winckelmann, whom he greatly admired, was a writer of 
great power and originality, and exercised a marked in- 
fluence on the later writers of the naturalistic school. Zola 
called him ' ' the father of us all ' ' ; Balzac proclaimed his 
genius ; Merimee, incomparably his superior in style, was in a 
measure his pupil; Bourget's indebtedness is obvious. Yet 
he wrote abominably, and it was not till long after his death 
that literary criticism awoke to his importance. " I will not 
say he writes badly," says Faguet, " but that he does not 
write at all. He regards neither form nor method. He drafts, 
he never writes. Nevertheless, he is a great novelist." 
Stendhal himself has remarked, with more truth and less pose 
than his autobiographical notes commonly reveal, that he 
set about writing as he would smoke a cigar. His indif- 
ference to literary style — -singular failing for a Frenchman — 

424 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

blinded Victor Hugo to his merits. "Is he still alive? " 
asked the author of Les Miserables. "No? That is unfor- 
tunate, because I should have requested you to tell him that 
I shall wait to read his works until he writes French. ' ' Hugo 
was not the only one who waited, in another sense. Sten- 
dhal himself prophesied in a letter to Balzac in 1840 that his 
books would not be read till about 1880, and the prophecy 
came to pass. 

Stendhal, whose idol was Napoleon, served in the com- 
missary department of the army during the Napoleonic cam- 
paigns; he was present at the battle of Jena, and wrote, as 
an eyewitness, a description of the burning of Moscow. His 
life, indeed, was by no means eventless ; he knew war, and he 
suffered the emotions of love in a series of amatory ex- 
periences which seem to have yielded him more literary 
" copy " than contentment. He appears to have craved ex- 
citement with an expectation that outran reality. M. Rod tells 
us that he displayed great coolness and courage during his 
first battle beneath the fort of Bard, and that when the fight 
was done he asked himself in all sincerity, " Is this all? " 
Subtle and artificial, Stendhal was essentially a psychologist, 
but his analytical penetration overlooked everything which 
did not pertain to the intellect or to passion. He loved 
mystery, so that real facts concerning his character have only 
gradually come out; both the man and his works afford too 
many complexities for brief exposition. Stendhal traveled 
extensively, and was well acquainted with English literature. 
He lived much of the time in Paris, but his heart was in 
Italy, where he served as consul in Civita Vecchia. It was 
characteristic of him that he wrote his own epitaph, describ- 
ing himself as a Milanese, and caused it to be engraved on 
his tombstone : ' ' Qui giace Arrigo Beyle, Milanese. Scrisse, 
Amd, Visse." (" Here lies Henri Beyle, Milanese. He wrote, 
loved, lived.") 

Of Stendhal's novels, La Chartreuse de Parme (immortal- 
ized by its description of the battle of Waterloo) and Le 
Rouge et le Noir are generally regarded as his most important 
fiction, and as having paved the way for the French psychol- 
ogists of our own time. The Chartreuse de Parme, which, in- 
Balzac's opinion, might have been written by Machiavelli had 

425 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

he lived in exile in the nineteenth century, describes the in- 
trigues of Italian court life. Its exaggerated and sensational 
plot suggests the novel of adventure ; its merit lies in Stendhal 's 
extraordinary power of analysis. Le Rouge et le Noir indicates 
in its title the red trappings of the soldier, the black frock of 
the priest. Stendhal as a youth was educated by priests, 
whom he disliked and who misunderstood him, and in this 
tale he has ironically exhibited the clergy, after the fall 
of Napoleon, as paramount to the army. In the principal 
character, Julien Sorel, the author has drawn a remarkable 
portrait of an ambitious and egotistical man, of which Fer- 
dinand Brunetiere writes: " I should not like to decide 
which is more to be marveled at, the incoherence of this 
character or the conceit of the author. ... I will also take 
note, if you like, of Stendhal's influence, but I will also re- 
mark that his influence was not very deep, and that it finally 
ended only in an immoderate glorification of the author of 
La Chartreuse de Parme — that masterpiece of pretentious 
tedium — rather than in any modification of the novel.' ' 

Stendhal's best work, perhaps, is his minutely analyti- 
cal study, De l' Amour, which fell flat at the time of publica- 
tion, but has come to be recognized as unsurpassed of its kind. 
In his critical and biographical works on music and painting 
he was an unblushing plagiarist. His " lives " of Haydn 
and Mozart, published under the pen name of Bombet, were 
coolly appropriated from Carpani; in writing his De la pein~ 
ture en Italie he borrowed freely, and without credit from 
Lanzi. But all that he did in this kind was interwoven with 
his personality and his art as a raconteur. He was an ad- 
mirable tourist, and his books of travel — including the 
Promenades dans Borne and the Memoir es d f un Tourist e — 
are methodless, but highly agreeable records of an accom- 
plished dilettante. Stendhal's writings are not popular, but 
at the present time he has become a cult with an increasing 
circle of admirers. Prof. Benjamin W. Wells and Mr. James 
Huneker, in this country, have gone far in supplying criti- 
cal estimates of his works and analyses of his character ; while 
in France his performance and his personality have variously 
engaged the pens of Taine, Zola, Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Bour- 
get, and Edouard Rod. 

426 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

If the deranged nervous system of Gustave Flaubert 
(1821-80) had not belied a body that bespoke the robust 
giant, he might have been the king of the Romanticists; for 
romantic he was by inclination and equipment. Instead, he 
wrote Madame Bovary — a dreary, sordid tragedy of provincial 
life in Normandy. This story, which the critic, J. J. Weiss, 
classed among the " brutal literature, ' ' and upon which 
Flaubert had spent six years, first appeared (1857) in the 
Revue de Paris, and made such a scandal that author and 
publisher were haled into court on a charge of immorality. 
They were, however, acquitted; people were not long in per- 
ceiving that Flaubert had an ethical, not a prurient, purpose, 
in his exhibits of unpleasant subjects and characters, and that 
an author of genius, with a marvelous style, had pointed the 
way to a new literary method. Flaubert, however, though 
he has been acclaimed the high priest of realism, does not 
really belong to the school of disciples who afterwards hailed 
him as master. His undying hatred of the bourgeoisie, his 
revolt against the mediocrity of modern environment, his 
overpowering sense of futility, led him far from the idols of 
his youth — Hugo and Chateaubriand. His analytic mind 
warred with his imagination. The malady (epilepsy) that 
corroded his soul, that made his presentment of life, as he 
himself has confessed, " a smell escaping from the vent of a 
nauseating kitchen/' influenced his intellect in the selection 
of material from humanity's great storehouse. But the 
poetic sentiment that linked him with the Romanticists was not 
extinguished; and so he was a realist and a romanticist by 
turns. In one of his romantic reactions he took refuge in 
antiquity, and wrote Salammbo. For this he visited Tunis, 
dwelt among the ruins of Carthage, ransacked a thousand 
books, and then for six years toiled interminably — building, 
polishing, recasting his sentences, till the ancient city and its 
picturesque civilization were recreated in the glowing pages 
of his fiction. Salammbo, sister of Hannibal, is the central 
figure; the period is that immediately following the first 
Punic war; the story relates to the uprising of the merce- 
naries against Rome. 

In his L'Education sentimentale (1869), Flaubert again 
made provincial life the subject of his satirical scorn ; but this 

427 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

time his literary skill did not redeem the depressing quali- 
ties of his work. " To think," remarks Mr. Henry James, 
" of the talent, the knowledge, the experience, the observa- 
tion that he buried, without hope of resurrection, in these 
pages, is to pass a comfortless half hour." 

Flaubert's great fantastic tale, La Tentation de Saint- 
Antoine, was begun in 1848, and finished in 1874. Its mel- 
ancholy view of humanity throughout the ages, conveyed in 
pictures of extraordinary power, is a document of all-em- 
bracing pessimism. The same theme, with a contemporary 
application, is worked out in the uncompleted Bouvard et 
Pecuchet, which appeared in 1881. Trois contes (1877) con- 
tains the three novelettes, TJn cceur simple, La legende de 
Saint-Julien VHospitalier, and Herodias — condensed ex- 
amples of Flaubert's manner in which some critics find the 
most satisfactory expression of his powers. 

Flaubert has been called the " writer of writers.' ' His 
works exercise a potent fascination for all persons susceptible 
to the charm of literary style. His passion for the right word 
— the one and only word that will express the author's 
thought — became for him a kind of religion. He spent hours 
on a single phrase until he had made it perfect in expres- 
sion and harmony, and after he had written it he would read 
it aloud. After visiting him on a certain occasion, Taine 
wrote : ' ' He declaimed and shouted so this night that his 
mother could not sleep." 

Flaubert had no love affairs — unless his epistolary rela- 
tions with the poetess Mademoiselle Louise Colet, may be con- 
sidered as such — and he remained a bachelor. Aside from six 
years spent in r^aris, he passed his life at Croisset, near Rouen, 
his birthplace. He had private means, and was thus enabled to 
produce slowly; but the last ten years of his life, in addition 
to misfortunes of friendship and the serious impairment of 
his health, were passed in comparative poverty. 

Those curious literary twins, the brothers Goncourt (Ed- 
mond, 1822-96; Jules, 1830-70), afford a singular example 
of collaboration: each took the same subject, and elaborated 
it on the same plan, and then together they fused their sep- 
arate productions into one work issued under both their names. 
The literary method which they introduced, and applied to 

428 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

the writing of history, as well as fiction, was microscopic in 
observation, and infinitely laborious and tortured in the 
record. They set themselves to interpreting modern life with 
the most minute fidelity, and neither the clinic nor the gutter 
escaped the zeal of their research. It was their theory that 
no thing or person which they could not themselves examine 
was material proper to fiction; the characters which they 
transferred to the pages of a novel were real persons whose 
speech, manners, and conduct they had studied at close range. 
In the pursuit of the veritable, Edmond even made innumer- 
able notes with the aid of an opera glass. Among the novels 
which they jointly produced were Sozur Philomene (1861), 
descriptive of the hospital life of a Sister of Charity ; Renee 
Mauperin (1864), a study of social life; Germinie Lacerteux 
(1865), a characteristic exposition of the morals of a domestic 
servant who had been employed in the Goncourt household; 
Manette Salomon (1867), in which is traced the degeneration 
of an artist who married a model; Madame Gervaisais (1869), 
a study in mysticism, in the preparation of which Edmond 
devoured numerous works of religious devotion. These stories 
are made up of sketches or impressions of particular episodes 
or incidents in the lives of the characters, and contain bits of 
vivid delineation after the manner of naturalism. As for the 
style, it is Vecriture artiste, abounding in coined words, and 
in devious turns and twists of expression — in short, it is a 
new kind of French. A critic of that nation has called their 
novels romans particularistes, and has described their mode 
of expression as " labored, inverted, unexpected, disconcert- 
ing, always affected and seeming to strive to the utmost to 
find all possible ways how not to be natural. " The dramas 
produced jointly are Eenriette Marechal and La Patrie en 
danger, protestations against romanticism. 

The Goncourts made a specialty of the eighteenth century, 
and their art criticisms and historical studies are of consider- 
able value. Their passion for patient research and for docu- 
mentary evidence is given a brilliant setting in Histo-ire de la 
Societe franchise pendant la Revolution et sous le Directoire; 
La Revolution dans les moeurs; Portraits intimes du 
XVI II erne Siecle; Les Mattresses de Louis XV; La femme 
au XV I Heme Siecle; L'Art au XVIII erne Siecle, which con- 

429 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tains thirteen sketches of the principal painters and engravers 
of the eighteenth century. The life of the great painter Wat- 
teau, heretofore almost unknown, the incomparable Greuze, 
Boucher, and Fragonard — " le petit poete de Part d 'aimer do 
temps, le Cherubim de la peinture erotique " — are among 
those who have found marvelous interpreters in these brilliant 
chroniclers, the de Goncourts. 

After Edmond had watched the lingering death of his 
brother Jules, noted each symptom of mental decay, and 
diagnosed the disease as " literature/ ' he continued his 
labors alone. t Between 1878 and 1884 he produced the nov- 
els, La Fille Elisa, Les Freres Zemganno, La Faustin, Cherie; 
and he lived to see a fungous growth of the naturalistic fiction 
he had helped to nourish. From 1887 until his death he was 
occupied with the nine volumes of Le Journal des Goncourt, 
which is packed with information — more or less indiscreet — 
concerning the lives of himself and his literary contempora- 
ries. Among those who frequented his reunions were Daudet, 
Zola, Paul Margueritte, Rosny, and Loti. In order that these 
associations should not be broken up he bequeathed his prop- 
erty — including the house at Auteuil and his valuable collec- 
tions of bric-a-brac and Japanese art — to ten of his friends, 
composing the Academie Goncourt. 1 By the terms of his 
will each of the ten was to receive a life annuity of six thou- 
sand francs, to be forfeited, however, if he entered the French 
Academy. 

Alphonse Daudet (1840-97), one of the most engaging 
figures in modern French literature, combined the imagi- 
nation and fancy of an idyllic poet with the faculty of ob- 
serving and recording modern life in some of its sinister as- 
pects. The exuberance of the Provencal was tempered and 
restrained by his Parisian environment and associations; his 
impressionable temperament and his keen perception of hu- 
man suffering were held in check by a sense of humor that, 
in the main, saved him from errors of intolerance and dis- 
proportion. Zola's description of his appearance in early 

1 Daudet and Hennique were named as presidents. The other eight 
members were the two Rosny brothers, Paul Margueritte, J. K. Huysmans, 
Gustave Geonroy, Lucien Descaves, Memir Bourges, Octave Mirbeau. 

430 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

youth well accords with the mental pictures produced by a 
perusal of his writings: " He had the delicate, high-strung 
beauty of an Arabian horse. His hair was flowing, his silky 
beard divided. He had large eyes, a narrow nose, an am- 
orous mouth — a countenance illuminated with a tender light 
that lent it individuality, and a smile that expressed intellect 
and the joy of living. There was something in him of the 
French urchin and something of the Oriental woman." 

Daudet, who was born in Nimes, in Southern France, was 
thrown on his own resources, through the failure of his 
father, a silk manufacturer. Leaving school at Lyons when 
he was sixteen, he undertook to make his living as an usher 
at a small college in Alais ; but such was the drudgery of the 
task, and so mean were the conditions imposed upon him, 
that after a year of misery he fled to Paris, where his elder 
brother, a journalist, had already preceded him. He reached 
Paris half starved, and with but two francs in his pocket; 
but he was not destined to great privations. His brother 
succored him; de Yillemessant, the editor of Le Figaro, recog- 
nized his talent at once, and made a place for him ; and at the 
age of twenty he became one of the secretaries of his power- 
ful patron, the Due de Moray, whom he afterwards lam- 
pooned in Le Nabob (1878). At first he wrote poems, col- 
lected in book form, in 1858, with the title Amoureuses. 
This brought him some celebrity, but he did not long pursue 
the vocation of poet. In these first years he essayed the 
drama, to which he returned from time to time — always with 
indifferent success; earned his bread in journalism; and pro- 
duced some fairy tales, including Le Bom an du Chaperon 
rouge. Then in 1868-69 — having secluded himself for a 
time in a ruined windmill in the country in Provence— there 
appeared two works that made him famous. The first of 
these, Le Petit Chose, was a pathetic leaf from his own life; 
the second, Lettres de Hon Moulin (Letters from my Wind- 
mill), a collection of tales and sketches — idyllic, realistic, 
humorous, analytic — that marked him a master of the conte. 
Daudet thereafter wrote many short stories — a vehicle in 
which his varied powers are seen in miniature, and in which 
he has not been surpassed by any of his contemporaries. With 
the publication of Jack (1873) — a poignant story of an illegit- 

431 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

imate child, that profoundly affected George Sand — he real- 
ized that his metier was the novel. A year later, Fromont 
jeune et Risler aine was a popular success, and revealed him 
as a realistic novelist of penetration and power. Les Rois en 
Exit (1879), the least popular of his works, is a satiric fling 
at certain bankrupt kings who had sought the consolations of 
life in Paris. Numa Roumestan (1882) is a wonderful study 
(in which Gambetta sat for the portrait) of the lights and 
shades of Provencal character. In some respects it is Daudet 
at his best. In L'Evangeliste (1883) inspired, it is said, by 
the visit to Paris, of the Salvation Army, he pictured, in 
pessimistic strokes, the effect on a simple mind of misdirected 
religious enthusiasm. Sapho (1884), dedicated " to my sons 
when they are twenty, ' ' is a deterrent portrait, delicately 
executed, of the French courtesan. Though L'Immortel 
(1889), a bitter, personal satire on the French Academy and 
its members, enjoyed a large sale, it is the least happy of 
Daudet 's productions. It represents indeed, in an extreme 
degree, his most serious sin against art — his tendency in his 
novels to exhibit, under a too transparent disguise, the weak- 
nesses of well-known persons in real life. It has also been held 
against Daudet that he imitated Dickens and Thackeray rather 
too closely. Like Dickens, he possessed the power of mingling 
tears with laughter. It may further be remarked that the 
sentimentalism of Dickens's pathos is not that author's strong- 
est point; and that those who love to dwell on these things 
may find some instruction in comparing the death of Little 
Nell with Daudet 's La Mort du Dauphin in the Lettres de 
mon Moulin. 

In Tartarin de Tarascon (1872^ and its sequels — Tartarin 
sur les Alpes (1886) and Port-Tarascon (1890) — Daudet em- 
ployed his skill in satire and characterization, not in sounding 
the depths of human weakness and suffering, but in holding 
up to joyous ridicule the peculiar foibles of the Southern 
Frenchman. As a piece of sustained humor, faithful to a 
local type, yet ingrained with elements of world-wide truth, 
there is nothing in modern French literature comparable to 
Tartarin. 

Daudet 's literary style is vivacious, expressive, and ap- 
pealing. ' ' II touche, il plait, il charme, il possede ce don d 'at- 

432 



THE REALISTIC NOVEL 

tendrir qui est d'un si grand prix," says Anatole France. He 
wrote at a time when the public demanded realism, but he did 
not adhere very closely to the tenets of Zola and his school, 
with whom he was connected more by association than by 
sympathy. As Augustin Filon has remarked: " He bor- 
rowed from it all that was good and sound • he accepted real- 
ism as a practical method, not as an ultimate result and a con- 
summation. Again, he was prevented from the danger of 
going down too deep and too low into the unclean mysteries 
of modern humanity, not so much perhaps by moral delicacy 
as by an artistic distaste for all that is repulsive and un- 
seemly." 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE NATURALISTIC NOVEL 
EMILE ZOLA 

" Naturalism," says a distinguished critic, " is still real- 
ism, but realism advertising scientific pretensions; or rather, 
it is an attempt to assimilate the proceedings of literature 
and the proceedings of science. It is, therefore, experimental. 
In short, the naturalistic novelists have been attentive ob- 
servers of modern life, but have unfortunately paid atten- 
tion only to its obscenities. ' ' 

The chief representative of this school is Emile Zola 
(1840-1902), whose so-called scientific method — a libel on 
the exact proceedings of true science — was especially directed 
to expounding human motives and conduct with reference to 
heredity. It is pretty generally agreed that he was the vic- 
tim of his own theories — which he defined in his Roman ex- 
perimental and in his Romanciers naturalistes — and that in 
failing to demonstrate them in his own writings he also 
failed to obtain the lasting recognition which he might other- 
wise have achieved through a happier employment of his 
powers. These consist of a prodigious talent for description 
— particularly in descriptions of the crowd in action, of mobs 
and men in battle ; of a gloomy imagination that impelled him 
to write as a kind of epic poet masquerading as a scientific ob- 
server; of a vigor in composition, a fecund creative ability. 
His sternest critics admit the effectiveness of his imagery; 
those whose stomachs revolt at his grossness, his vulgarity, 
his deliberate delight in the nauseous, his lugging in of de- 
pravity by the heels — point, nevertheless, if somewhat ironic- 
ally, to a novelette, L'Attaque du Moulin, as a little classic 
among battle pieces. Zola was either congenitally incapable 
of seeing the true proportions by which a balance is struck 

434 



THE NATURALISTIC NOVEL 

between the ugly and the base and the beautiful and noble 
in life, or in his obsession by a theory he willfully blinded him- 
self to the virtues and aspirations of humanity. He did not 
even possess the saving grace of that immature conception of 
character which sees people both as wholly good and wholly 
bad — but saw them, for the most part, as simply vicious. 
His style is lacking in lightness of touch, and unrelieved by 
the play of humor and fancy ; ponderous in manner, his mat- 
ter when concerned with minute details is often tedious. 

Zola was born in Paris, but spent his school days in Aix, 
where his father, a Venetian engineer with a Greek strain, 
was engaged in building a canal. On returning to Paris he 
suffered great privations, spending at times an entire week 
in bed because his clothing was in pawn. Finally, he ob- 
tained employment as a clerk in the publishing house of 
Hachette, and devoted his leisure hours to writing— his criti- 
cisms on art and literature, contributed to the press, attract- 
ing some attention. After the appearance of Mes Haines, 
Mon Salon, and Edouard Manet (an appreciation of the im- 
pressionistic painter), he produced a volume of short stories, 
Contes a Ninon (1864) that are not inferior in literary value 
to his later and more celebrated work, together with several 
novels, of which Therese Baquin (1867) will bear compari- 
son with some of his most vivid creations. 

From 1871 until 1893 Zola occupied himself in writing the 
series of twenty novels on which his reputation chiefly rests 
— novels comprising a separate story in each volume, but 
linked by the same purpose, and introducing members of the 
same family under the general title, Les Bougon-Macquart , 
histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le second Em- 
pire. The Rougon-Macquart novels, in the order of their ap- 
pearance, are : La Fortune des Bougon, La Curee, Le Ventre 
de Paris, La Conquete de Plassans, La Faute de I' Abbe 
Mouret, Son Excellence Eugene Bougon, L'Assommoir, Une 
Page d' Amour, Nana, Pot-Bouille, Au Bonheur des Dames, 
La Joie de Vivre, Germinal, L'CEuvre, La Terre, Le Beve, La 
Bete Humaine, L' Argent, La Debacle, Le Docteur Pascal. 
This plan — pursued partly by the methods of naturalistic 
observation, and also in a great measure by devouring books 
on the subject in hand — was to demonstrate scientifically and 

435 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

with reference to hereditary laws how a certain number of 
people of the same origin would conduct themselves in dif- 
ferent environments. With two exceptions, these novels are 
repulsive and distorted pictures of life, often deformed, even 
in their most brilliant passages, by coarseness and bad taste. 
The gross and repulsive realism of La Terre, in which the 
French peasants are pictured as beasts, disgusted even some 
of the author's adherents. These peasants depicted in their 
bloody debauches, their ribaldry, their brutality, and with an 
absolute lack of moral sense — that which in man is superior 
to his nature — are unnatural distortions. Zola appears to 
much better advantage in La Debacle, in which the fall of the 
Napoleonic dynasty and the Franco-Prussian War are de- 
scribed with great intensity and power. Le Reve and line 
Page d' Amour, in which Zola restrained his tendency to nas- 
tiness, scarcely warrant the assumption that he might have 
attained great celebrity by eschewing the gross and sensa- 
tional. It is impossible here to treat in detail the defects of 
his method. But take the one instance of La Bete Humaine. 
John Addington Symonds, who discovered in Zola " an 
idealist of the purest water " — that is to say, one who treated 
reality from an ideal point of view, has remarked that this 
novel of murder confounded with sexual desire " has all 
those qualities of the constructive reason by which an ideal is 
distinguished from the bare reality. Not only does it violate 
our sense of probability in life that ten persons should be 
either murderers or murdered, or both together, when all of 
them exist in close relations through their common connec- 
tions with one. line of railway, but the short space of time re- 
quired for the evolution of this intricate drama of blood and 
appetite is also unnatural." 

Zola's trilogy of the cities — Lourdes, Rome, Paris — has 
not enhanced his reputation, while Fecondite, Travail, Verite 
— the three novels of the uncompleted Quatre Evangiles (Four 
Gospels) — betray the decline of his imagination and descrip- 
tive powers. In 1898, four years before his death, he startled 
France by his daring and eloquent espousal of the cause of 
Dreyfus — his famous letter in the Aurore, beginning " J'ac- 
cuse "... leading to an investigation and exposure of the 
conspiracy against the long-suffering army officer. 

436 



THE NATURALISTIC NOVEL 

Zola's novels have enjoyed a tremendous vogue, which 
may in part be accounted for by their very deficiencies and 
by the persistent and flamboyant advertising which attended 
their production in France, where the unspeakable Nana, 1 La 
Debacle and La Terre were the most popular of all his works ; 
but L'Assommoir and Germinal are considered his two mas- 
terpieces. Zola was a tireless worker, and though his actual 
daily output is said to have been but five hundred words, he 
had no idle days, but lived up to the motto inscribed over the 
hearth in his study at Medan : ' ' Nulla dies sine linea. ' ' He 
repeatedly sought admission to the Academy, but in vain. 
After his death France decreed the removal of his remains 
from the Pere-Lachaise to the Pantheon, as a recognition of his 
service in the cause of justice rather than of his literary 
merits. 

GUY DE MAUPASSANT 

Both in his person and in his work Guy de Maupassant 
(1850-93) presents a paradox. Outwardly a ruddy ath- 
lete, a powerful oarsman and swimmer, he was in reality a 
neurasthenic; in his literary labors he found no joy, but 
only, as he has himself confessed, a refuge from the emptiness 
of life. We are told that he had no powers of invention, no 
theories of art, that he was neither a thinker nor a reader — 
even that he had no ideas. " He was born," says Faguet, 
' ' to see and to paint that which he saw — and only that. But 
he saw it with a fullness and a miraculous intensity of vision, 
and he described it with a breadth and at the same time with 
a precision which enraptured and stupefied." Maupassant, 
in fact, as one critic has expressed it, was great because of his 
very limitations : his fancy did not war with his habit of acute 
observation; he made no excursions beyond his chosen prov- 
ince of the actual; he did not concern himself with morals; 
his outlook was objective always. After serving a literary 
apprenticeship of seven years (1873-80) to Flaubert, who was 
his godfather and an old friend of his mother, he put forth a 
volume of poems (Des Vers) of marked originality. In the 

1 One hundred and sixteen editions show its popularity. 
437 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

same year he astonished the literary world with his story, 
Boule de Suif, contributed to the Soirees de Medan—a. collec- 
tion of short tales by Zola, J. K. Huysmans and others. This, 
together with the two novels, Une Vie (1883) — a very painful 
but convincing picture of an average woman's tragic life — 
and Pierre et Jean (1888), are among the most remarkable 
of his productions. Maupassant's fame rests principally on 
his short tales, of which he composed over two hundred. 
Very many of these are models of concision and style. 
Some of the best of them are stories of the peasants of Nor- 
mandy, where he was born and reared; others are far afield, 
covering a wide range of human emotion and experience. In 
these, as in his novels, appears the pessimism that dominated 
his attitude toward life, coupled with a licentiousness in 
choice of subject that is redeemed only by an exquisite irony 
and art. Some of his studies in the emotion of fear express 
the vague dread that haunted him all his life. He especially 
feared old age. He feared also that he might cease to enjoy 
the sensuous things in life. The morbid and haunting fancies 
of La Horla (1887) disclosed him in the clutch of the mental 
malady that finally overpowered him; aggravated by drugs 
and other excesses, his disease took the form of violent in- 
sanity, and he perished very miserably. Among the titles of 
his sixteen volumes of short stories are: La Maison Tellier; 
Mademoiselle Fifi; M. Parent; Yvette; La Petite Rogue. His 
play, Musotte (1891), written in collaboration with J. Nor- 
mand, met with a considerable success. 



J. K. HUYSMANS, MARCEL PROVOST 

Among the talented young men who rallied around Zola 
in his soirees of Medan x was a pupil who surpassed the pre- 
ceptor in living up to the tenets of naturalism. To Joris 
Karl Huysmans (1848-1907)— born in Paris, but of Flemish 
origin — belongs the distinction of producing some of the 
foulest works of fiction with which the French nation has 
ever been afflicted. His earlier novels— Marthe, Les Soeurs 



1 Zola's home near Paris. 
438 



THE NATURALISTIC NOVEL 

Vatard, En menage— are of the slime, slimy, and may be dis- 
missed as such. After the publication of Zola's La Terre 
Huysmans developed a taste for the occultism run mad that 
became at this time a fad of the Parisians, and in his novel, 
La-Bas presented a repulsive study of Satanism, in which the 
writer, Durtal, is so disgusted with the world that he turns to 
the devil for consolation. It is a phenomenon of such tempera- 
ments that after a time the pendulum swings the other way. 
Huysmans, self-nauseated, found relief in mysticism. He 
entered a Trappist monastery, and recorded his moral ex- 
perience, with no little beauty and sincerity, in the pages of 
En Route (1895). In the drift of the novel of to-day Huys- 
mans declared that he saw only ct anarchy and confusion." 
As a matter of fact, a more wholesome and rational concep- 
tion of life and letters had begun to make itself felt in the 
reaction that always takes place when men grow weary of 
wading in the mire. 

Marcel Prevost (born 1862), whose Zolaesque tendencies 
became diverted under the influence of Bourget, has wavered 
between an ethical purpose and the inclination to rest content 
with his searching and popular exposition of the feminine 
heart. He is an accomplished writer of love stories, told with 
great delicacy and ease of style. Choncliette (1888) estab- 
lished his success, and his Lett res de femmes (1892) earned 
him a reputation as one of the wittiest men of his period. 
Demi-vierges (1894) enjoyed a brief trans- Atlantic vogue. 
His later novels, Frederique and Lea, rank with the best of 
contemporary fiction, and disclose an advance in nobility of 
sentiment and ideas. 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL NOVEL 
BOURGET, ROD, MARGUERITTE 

The narrow views of the naturalists, their exaggerated 
concern for externals and their coarseness of touch brought 
about an inevitable reaction that expressed itself through 
fiction in analysis of the mind and of sentiment, and, above 
all, in the study of moral problems. This movement began 
about 1885, when M. Brunetiere, in an article on the English 
novelist, George Eliot, introduced to the French a realism 
as exact as theirs, but informed with human sympathy and 
a more refined method of ethical inquiry. At the same time 
the materialism and determinism of Taine, whose philosophy 
had been reflected in a somewhat distorted fashion by Zola 
and his disciples, gave way to the cultured skepticism and 
dilettanteism of Renan, among whose pupils are Lemaitre and 
Anatole France. The Russian novelists, too, were a factor in 
shaping the tendencies of French fiction, which has not in re- 
cent years looked to any one leader for its ideas and formulas, 
but has followed various currents — psychological, mystical, 
symbolical, decadent, and has lost perhaps in robustness and 
conviction what it has gained in idealism. 

In the preface to his novel, Trois cozurs, Edouard Rod 
calls the psychological method " Intuitivism. ' ' Its foremost 
exponent — the leader of the reaction against the naturalists 
of fiction — is Paul Bourget (born 1852), who derives both 
from Renan and Taine. Bourget has the broad equipment 
supplied by travel, study, and recreation, and his gift of 
subtle and acute analysis has contributed to make his essays 
of more importance than his novels. His Essais de Psycho- 
logie Contemporaine (1883), the Nouveaux Essais (1885) 
and the Pastels d'Hommes et de Femmes (1890-91), are 
psychological presentments of literary men and of lay types, 
both masculine and feminine, in which the author has been 
described as writing the history of his own soul as well as some 
chapters of the moral history of his times. In some of his 
earlier novels— as in Cruelle Enigme (1885), he betrays his 
fatalism, but in Le Disciple (1889) and La Terre Promise 

440 



THE NATURALISTIC NOVEL 

(1892) he indicates that such doctrines may lead one into 
crime. Still later — in Le Fantome, Drames de Famille and 
L'Etape — he strikes a more human note that is none the less 
psychological in its analysis. In his last novel L 'Emigre, 
Bourget advocates a return to the church and the throne as a 
panacea for France 's social troubles. His especial field in fic- 
tion is the fashionable world, and he has found a large audi- 
ence among women. Bourget was admitted to the Academy 
in 1894. 

Edouard Rod (born 1857) was at first a follower of Zola, 
but later employed his talent for delicate analysis in the 
treatment of moral ideas and questions of conscience. La 
Vie privee de Michel Teissier, together with its sequel, La 
seconde Vie de Michel Teissier, represent his earlier manner. 
Of his later work, L' Inutile Effort (1903) is one of the most 
touching novels of the day. 

Paul Margueritte (born 1860) explored for a time the 
depths of naturalism; but in 1887 he abjured the teachings 
of that school, and in La Force des Choses (1891) produced 
a strong and wholesome work. Ma Grande (1893) is a story 
of simple pathos, relieved by effective humor. In 1898, in 
Le Desastre, he turned his hand to an historical study of the 
Franco-Prussian War, followed by a sequel, Les Trongons da 
Glaive (1900), written in collaboration with his brother 
Victor. 

BARRES, ROSNY, FABRE, CLARETIE 

Maurice Barres (born 1862) in Sous VCEil des Bar oar es 
(1888), Un Homme Libre (1889), and Le Jardin de Berenice 
(1890), began by writing beautifully— if somewhat vaguely 
and unintelligibly — about himself. In these novels of " le 
culte du moi " x he undertook to adapt to the French under- 
standing the subversive ideas of the philosopher Nietzche. 
Les Deracines (1898) — a protest against individualism — ex- 
hibits the development of another and a more practical 
attitude—" le culte du pays natal " (the cult of the father- 
land). This novel, together with L'Appel au Soldat, belongs 
to the series called L'Energie Nationale. M. Barres is con- 
spicuous among the literary companions who stand for " na- 

1 The cult of self! 
441 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tional energy. ' ' He is one of the political ' ' old guard ' ' 
of Nationalists, and we see him in the French Chamber of 
Deputies (March, 1908) vigorously, but hopelessly, opposing 
the appropriation of funds to pay for the removal of Zola's 
bones to the Pantheon. 

J. H. Rosny (1856- ) (a name that stands for the com- 
bined work of two brothers) is another deserter from the 
doctrines of Zola, and a writer of uneven merit who has made 
a cult of science and ethics. 

To go back a little, we have in Ferdinand Fabre (1827- 
98) the incomparable painter of priests and peasants of 
the Cevennes. Among his best works are Mon Oncle Celestin, 
Le Chewier, and L'Abbe Tigrane. 

Passing mention suffices for the work of Jules Renard, 
lately made a member of the Academie Goncourt; of the 
realistic Willy (pseudonym of Henry Gauthier-Villars) , 
whose novel, Claudine a Vecole, was a great popular success; 
of Leon Daudet (son of Alphonse Daudet), who developed a 
vein of naturalistic satire in Les Morticoles; of the versatile 
and proficient Jules Claretie, critic, historian, playwright, 
chronicler, and especially a novelist of fecundity and no little 
merit, whose twenty-five works of fiction include Monsieur le 
Ministre, L' Assassin, and Les Ornieres de la Vie. 

With every new tendency in literature there arises in 
France a " school. " The latest manifestation of this striving 
for novel methods is the Ecole Naturiste, founded in 1900 by 
George de Bouhelier, who regards the events and expressions 
of life and nature as so many revelations of the will of God. 
Bouhelier, who has many ardent disciples, is the author of 
La Tragedie du Nouveau Christ, in which Christ is depicted 
as a modern man in relation to modern circumstances. Lucie, 
file perdue et criminelle is regarded as his best novel. 

THE NOVEL OF THE PROVINCES 

French writers, with some few exceptions, have confined 
themselves to Paris and its immediate environment. Their 
occasional exploration of the provinces has been chiefly for 
purposes of caricature and ridicule. But of recent years their 
eyes have been opened to a wealth of neglected beauty in town 

442 



THE NATURALISTIC NOVEL 

and country. Paul Adam, in his new book, La Morale de 
Paris, notes that, without official sanction, no one had formerly 
dared to approve a sonnet of Picardy, a play of Toulouse, an 
opera of Marseilles, a Vendean narrative, or a novel of 
Beauce. Now, Fabre has sounded the praises of the Cevennes. 
Loti celebrates the loveliness of Brittany. Theuriet has taken 
Lorraine for his theme; so also has Emile Moselly (pseudonym 
of Emile Chenin), the " Poet of the Moselle, " whose novel, 
Terres Lorraines, was recently awarded the Goncourt prize. 
In Le Deuil du Clocher, Joseph Ageorges has described the 
ancient province of Berry; Fits de la Terre is a Bearnaise 
novel by Capdeville; Pierre Vernon pictures the customs of 
Brittany in Aux Creux des Sillons. In the peasantry and 
scenery of Anjou, Bene Bazin (recently elected to the 
Academy) has found a congenial field for the exercise of an 
uncommon talent. The elegance of his style and the elevation 
of his ideas are displayed in La Terre qui meurt, Les Oberle, 
and Le BIS qui leve. His latest novel, L'Isolee, which has 
passed its fifty-eighth edition in France, is the story of five 
nuns thrown upon the world through the closing of their 
school by the French law. Finally — in La Chevre d'or, Jean 
des Figues, and Au Bon Soleil— that charming conteur, Paul 
Arene, has given us stories " perfect in form, and as clear 
and pure as a Provencal day." 

Of the five thousand women writers of France, the most 
widely known is Gyp, 1 the " gamin " of the Faubourg St. 
Germain, who has already published about ninety volumes of 
satiric fiction. The " explosion of feminine sincerity,' ' as a 
French critic expresses it, and which Nietzche prophesied, 
has taken place, and Madame Rachilde led the way. It is 
the expression of woman's views of life, morality, and passion 
from her own standpoint and not as heretofore, from man's; 
thus Stendhal's ungallant criticism of women writers no 
longer holds good : ' ' Ce qui fait que les f emmes, quand elles 
se font auteurs, atteignent rarement au sublime, c'est que 
jamais elles n'osent etre f ranches qu'a demi: etre f ranches 
serait pour elles comme sortir sans fichu. ' ' 

1 Pen name for Countess Gabrielle de Martel de Janville, a descendant 
of Mirabeau. 

443 



CHAPTER XXX 

RECENT POETRY 1 

Lyric poetry, revived by the Romanticists, has been in- 
fluenced by the various tendencies in literature. At first it 
was personal, subjective, as true lyric poetry should be ; then, 
toward the middle of the century, it became " scientific," 
impersonal. In this transformation Leconte de Lisle (1820- 
1894) was an important factor. In theory he sought to be 
impassive to his own sentiments and emotions as well as to 
those of others. He aimed at precision, and his style became 
exaggerated, though his verses, like Gautier's, showed great 
perfection of form. This studied, methodic impeccability, 
reduced to a system in the pursuit of art for art's sake, ex- 
ercised its sway over a group of young poets variously known 
as the " Parnassiens " and as " les impassibles. ' ' They took 
the name of Parnassiens from the name of their collection of 
poems, published by the editor under the title, Parnasse 
Contemporain. The thirty-four poets of this school — if such 
it can be called — acknowledged as their masters, Baudelaire, 
de Banville, Gautier, and Leconte de Lisle. They sacrificed 
everything to form — striving after a plastic, pictorial beauty 
that often charms the ear, but is lacking in passion and ideas, 
and does not reach the heart. Furthermore, though they 
rallied around Leconte de Lisle, not one of them resembled 
him, nor did any two of them resemble each other. The most 
distinguished and best known of the group were : Sully-Prud- 
homme (1839-1907), a poet of great distinction and delicacy 
of sentiments, who made poetry a medium for philosophy 

1 A " Salon of Poetry " was inaugurated in 1907 to be held in the Palais 
des Beaux- Arts, and to have an annual spring gathering, just as the Salon 
of Fine Arts. At the head of this movement are: Francois Copp6e, Catulle 
Mendes (both dead since), and Edmond Rostand. 

444 



RECENT POETRY 

in sonnet and epic; Paul Verlaine (1844-96), a mixture of 
the sensualist and mystic, in life as in his art, who rebelled 
against the hard and fast rules of French versification, often 
striking in his musical effects the true lyric note — an echo 
of Villon, a near cousin of Beaudelaire — melodious, repellant, 
exquisite, alarming; the Cuban, Jose-Maria de Heredia (born 
1842), an artificer of finely wrought sonnets, whose Trophees 
are considered the masterpiece of the Parnassiens; Anatole 
France, more widely known as novelist and critic; Catulle 
Mendes (1841-1909), who has been likened to Swinburne 
without Swinburne's genius; Francois Coppee (1842-1908), 
Academician, the poet of the humble and lowly. These sev- 
eral poets emerged from the cenacle of the " impassibles " to 
cultivate each his own particular manner. 

The reaction against the principles of the Parnassiens 
made itself felt about 1880 with the appearance of the 
Decadents. " Je suis PEmpire a, la fin de la Decadence/ ' 
wrote Verlaine, who with Mallarme, were the principal masters 
of this poetic school, later called the Symbolists. De Vigny 
and Beaudelaire were its precursors in France, but this 
tendency of poetry was influenced to some extent by German 
Wagnerism and the English Preraphaelites. 1 The Symbolists 
wished to create a poetry more supple and unrestrained than 
the old; and to attain vagueness and subtlety they held that 
objects should not be named, but suggested by pictures or 
symbols. Everything that no one understands — not even the 
poet himself — is called symbolism, says a critic of this eccen- 
tric " school," which Verlaine himself facetiously termed 
" Cymbalists." G. Vicaire under the pseudonym of Flou- 
pette cleverly parodied the Decadents, in Les deliquescences. 
These poets never touched the great questions of the age. If 
they had an aim, it is not apparent; only obscurity emerges 
from their misty theories. When you have read their poems 
you feel only that nothing has been said. Verlaine, in his 
Art Poetique, sets forth that in the credo of Symbolism the 
dreams and mysteries of the poet's recorded thought should 

1 A brotherhood originally consisting (1848) of J. E. Millais, Holman 
Hunt, and Rossetti, who advocated a closer study of nature, and protested 
against academic dictum. 

445 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

seek an affinity no longer with painting, but with music : " De 
la musique avant toute chose." The younger generation of 
Symbolists and Decadents have pushed this theory to an 
extreme, until their verses became an incredible jargon. Very 
few persons profess to understand Maeterlinck's first work, 
Les Serves chaudes—a, poem without rhyme, rhythm, or— it 
is scarcely necessary to add — reason. Only the elect in the 
circle of Arthur Rimbaud have confessed to admiration for his 
sonnet Voyelles, beginning: 

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu, voyelles, 
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes. 
A, noir corset velu des manches eclatantes 

Qui bombillent autour des puanteurs cruelles, 

" There is no joy in this new world " (of the decadents), 
wrote Lafcadio Hearn — " and scarcely any tenderness: the 
language is the language of art, but the spirit is of Holbein 
and the Gothic ages of religious madness." The Aphrodite 
and the Chansons de Bilitis of Louys appear to him as crimes. 

Among the most important Symbolists are Verlaine, the 
recognized head of the school; de Regnier; Jean Moreas, a 
Greek ; two Americans — Viele-Griffin and Merrill ; and Maeter- 
linck, a Fleming, whose genius in other vehicles of expression 
sets him quite apart from the others. Jean Moreas abandoned 
this school to found the ecole romane francaise, and counted 
among his disciples Maurice de Plessys, Raymond de La 
Talliede, Ernest Raynaud. This school repudiated the Roman- 
ticists, the Symbolists and the Parnassiens and renewed the 
Greco-Latin culture. 

Jean Richepin (born 1849), a poet of pagan proclivities, 
and of a somewhat riotously romantic imagination, whose La 
Chanson des Gueux (1876) was deemed an outrage on public 
morality, has become a sober lecturer to young ladies, and 
lately was elected to the seat in the Academy vacated by 
Theuriet. 

With Edmond Rostand (born 1864), whose title to poet 
in the highest sense is disputed, Semain, who died in 1900, 
and Rodenbach, ideas are no longer neglected, but are ad- 
mitted to an equal consideration with form and harmony. 

French genius does not lean to lyricism. In the first place, 

446 



RECENT POETRY 

the admirable clearness and precision of French as a vehicle 
of prose is, as Professor Saintsbury points out, an obstacle 
to poetical utterance. Its very sobriety and lucidity is ci an 
enemy to mystery, to vagueness, to what may be called the 
twilight of sense — all things more or less necessary to the 
highest poetry. " Moreover, in the France of to-day the 
drama and the novel are the dominant expressions of litera- 
ture. Another factor not commonly considered is the neglect 
of folklore— the subordination of the human and the homely 
to what is purely artificial in subject and treatment. It was 
the peasants of Southern Europe who for centuries kept 
lyric poetry alive; French classicism has never cherished it. 
Malherbe, followed by Boileau, expelled the traditions of folk- 
lore from the circles of the learned, and the Revolution 
administered the final blow. In Germany, Goethe, Uhland, 
Heine found much of their inspiration in these traditions; 
in France it has been otherwise. We miss it in the poems 
of her greatest lyric singers; it is a note that Hugo, Musset, 
Lamartine, did not strike. Too often have the poets, like the 
prose writers, of France addressed themselves, for the most 
part, not to the people, but to the sophisticated circle of 
Parisians, to the caf es-chantants of the capital and provinces. 1 
The greatest modern singer of France — far superior to 
the Parnassiens and the Decadents, from the point of view 
of poetic sentiment, not artistic style — is Mistral, the Pro- 
vencal poet. Since the beautiful poetry of the troubadours 
spent itself and was overcome by the devastating wars in the 
South of France, an attempt has been made by the people of 

1 Through the efforts of the third Napoleon, a collection of folklore was 
assembled in manuscript form, but though still preserved in the Biblio- 
theque Nationale in Paris, it has never been printed. Sebillot and Gaudoz, 
however, have edited an admirable collection of these traditions, with 
the title La France merveilleuse et legendaire, and the "Mother Goose" 
stories of Perrault have been continued by Sebillot in the Contes des 
provinces de France. The increasing vogue for songs in the cafes and 
artistic cabarets have produced new genres in the chanson: the " scie," an 
oft-recurring refrain, the "chanson 6grillarde" (subtle and licentious), and 
the " chanson rosse," a cynically realistic song disclosing with biting sarcasm 
the foibles of humanity. Rosse is also used in that sense to designate a 
play, an author, or a genre in literature. 

447 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

Provence to restore the Provencal patois to the dignity of a 
language (once spoken by perhaps one fourth of the French 
people) and to revive Provengal literature. What were for- 
merly the troubadours are to-day known as the Felibres: in 
1854, seven Provencal poets, Roumanille, Aubanel, Mistral, 
Brunet, Mathieu, Tavan, and Giera met at the Chateau of 
Fontesgugne near Avignon to found a society for the restora- 
tion and maintenance of the Provencal language (a branch of 
the langue d'oc) and literature. They called themselves "feli- 
bres, ' ' from a word found by Mistral in an old Provengal poem 
which stated that the Virgin Mary met Jesus " erne le set 
felibre de la lei " (among the seven doctors of the law). Ac- 
cording to Ducange " felibres " in low Latin means " nurs- 
ling fed on milk "; by extension, as applied to the Provencal 
poets, " nurslings of the Muses." Their reunions are called 
" felibriges," and an annual commemoration festival is held 
on St. Stella's day (twenty-first of May), the date of their 
organization. 1 

'Jasmin (Jacques Boe, 1789-1864), called le perruquier 
poete (the barber poet), continued that trade even after he 
had been the recipient of two great honors: the cross of the 
Legion of Honor, and the title of ' ' Prince of Poets, ' ' awarded 
by the Jeux Floraux. His poems, Jasmin collected under the 
title of Les Papillotos (the Curl-Papers, with allusion to his 
trade), and gave recitations of them in the Gascon dialect, 
throughout France. Everywhere he was enthusiastically ap- 
plauded, even in Paris at the Court, where Louis-Philippe 
accorded him a reception. The profits of his recitations 
amounted to a million and a half francs, all of which Jasmin 
gave to charity, thus adding another cognomen to his name — 
philanthropist. Lamartime called him the Homer e sensible 
des proletaires. Longfellow translated his poem L'Ablugo 
de Castel-Culie 2 (L Aveugle de Castel-Culie) . 

1 In 1876 this was subdivided into maintenances placed under the au- 
thority of a consistory of fifty members whose shield bears a golden locust. 

2 " The Blind Girl of Castel CuilleV' Longfellow writes: 

Only the Lowland tongue of Scotland might 
Rehearse this little tragedy aright; 
Let me attempt it with an English quill, 
And take, O Reader, for the deed the will. 

448 



RECENT POETRY 

In 1852, the Academie Francaise, awarded to Jasmin the prix 
extraordinaire for his Provencal poems. 

The most celebrated of the felibres is Frederic Mistral 
(born 1830). His works are Mireio (in French Mireille), 
a beautiful epic in which he revives, with many picturesque 
episodes, the popular traditions of Provence; Les isclo d'or 
(in French Les ties d'or), a collection of poems published in 
1871; together with Lous Tresor dou Felibrige (in French, 
Le Tresor du Felibrige), and a Provencal-French dictionary. 
Felix Gras (1841-1901) was the most brilliant of the second 
generation of felibres. 1 After Mistral and Roumanille, he 
was proclaimed the chief of the felibrige. Though seventy- 
nine years of age, Mistral, who refused to accept a seat in 
the French Academy, is still active in literary work, and re- 
cently shared the Nobel prize with Echegaray and Sienkiewicz, 
the funds of which he contributed to the establishment of a 
museum at Aries. This contains a costly collection of Pro- 
vencal costumes and general productions typical of the sunny 
Provencal country, 2 and was opened by Mistral during the 
festival inaugurated May 1909 in his honor, at Aries. The 
unveiling of his statue erected by his compatriots, and the 
fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of his famous poem 
Mireio, were the occasions for the celebration. 

In the northern part of France, a branch of the langue 
d'oil— the Walloon language — also aspires to its own language 
and literature. The " Societe Liegeoise de Litterature Wal- 
lonne," founded in 1856, has largely contributed to the con- 
tinued use of the Walloon in parts of Northern France, 
Belgium, and Rhenish Prussia, 

1 An Irishman, William Bonaparte Wyse, acquired the Provencal 
language and published a collection of poems li Parpaioun blu (les Papillons 
bleus, The blue Butterflies). 

2 From Provence came the inspiration of the Minnesingers — German 
lyric poets of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — who sang chiefly of 
love, and were succeeded by the Meistersingers. 



30 



CHAPTER XXXI 

PHILOSOPHERS 

The philosophy of the first part of the nineteenth century 
was Christian and spiritual — in direct contrast to that of the 
eighteenth century, which was atheistic and materialistic. Two 
schools contributed to this change : * ' 1 'ecole catholique, ' ' whose 
leaders were Joseph de Maistre, Lamennais, de Bonald, and 
Ballanche; and " l'ecole eclectique," with Victor Cousin, 
Royer-Collard, and Jouffroy at the head. Joseph, Count de 
Maistre (1754-1821), in his most popular work, the Soirees de 
St. Petersoourg, exploited the theories of theocracy and ab- 
solute monarchy. This book (written, as were his others, in 
the early years of the century, at St. Petersburg, where he 
served as minister for the King of Sardinia) is composed of 
eleven imaginary conversations, in which the increasing de- 
pravity of mankind is set forth in dismal hues — the interloc- 
utors being three Catholics : a Russian senator with a leaning 
to mysticism, a French emigre and man of the world, and the 
Count de Maistre himself. The idea of expiation, which 
dominates all his works, is developed in his Considerations sur 
la France — one of the most profound historic philosophical 
treatises of the nineteenth century. His Du Pape presents 
an apology for the spiritual and temporal power of the Pope 
as a protection against the oppression of their sovereigns. 
The Count de Maistre was not only a great thinker, but a 
writer gifted with extraordinary literary ability. He suf- 
fered many reverses and disappointments, but he never ceased 
to call France the most beautiful kingdom after Heaven. 

The Abbe de La Mennais, known as Lamennais, (1782- 
1854) experienced the most stirring developments in his relig- 
ious, philosophical, and political views. In his first work, 
Essai sur Vindifference en matiere de religion (1817), his opin- 

450 



PHILOSOPHERS 

ions on absolutism and Papal supremacy coincided with those 
of de Maistre. He attacked atheists, deists, and Protestants, 
with energetic eloquence — even refusing to class the Protes- 
tants as Christians; and declared that in the infallibility of 
the Pope lay the only escape from anarchy. The book caused 
an immense sensation, and Lamennais was hailed as a second 
Bossuet. In reality, the germ of skepticism and revolt lurked 
behind his argument of " the universal consent," and not 
reason, nor the senses, as the criterion of ecclesiastical author- 
ity. Pretty soon he found himself in the ranks of the Liberals ; 
and in his articles in the Avenir (to which Lacordaire, who 
carried romanticism into the pulpit, and Montalembert, con- 
tributed in the same spirit), he met with Rome's disapproval. 
A complete revolution took place in his religious views, ex- 
pressed in the Affaires de Borne, and in the poetical-biblical 
Paroles d'un croyant, in which he broke completely with the 
Papacy. In his Livre du Peuple he proclaimed the funda- 
mental principles of social democracy. It is interesting to 
note how the literary style of Lamennais — ardent, exuberant 
at all times, changes with his change of faith. Its brilliance 
and beauty in his earlier works becomes clouded and dis- 
organized in the productions following his apostasy, and satu- 
rated with bitterness and the spirit of rebellion. 

Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald (1754-1840), 
an ardent defender of orthodox religion and monarchy, was 
instrumental in modifying the law of divorce. His chief 
work is the Legislation primitive. Bonald denned man as an 
intellect supplied with organs. Pierre Simon Ballanche 
(1776-1847), author of the Essai sur les institutions soeiales 
and other works, was one of the wits of Madame Recamier's 
salon, at TAbbaye-aux-Bois. He believed in the expiation of 
original sin through suffering and remorse, and that in the 
eventual rehabilitation of the world man would enjoy a per- 
fect life. 

Victor Cousin (1792-1867), proclaimed by one of his 
adversaries, Mgr. Maret, as the greatest philosopher of 
modern times, was the son of a watchmaker and a laundress. 
He became a member of the royal council of public instruc- 
tion, reorganized the national system of primary studies, was 
elected to the French Academy in 1830, and two years later, 

451 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

at the age of forty, was made a Peer of France. Cousin as a 
philosopher drew his inspiration from the Scotchmen, Dugald 
Stewart and Thomas Reid, and fortified it by a study of 
Kant, Fichte, and particularly Hegel — making two visits to 
Germany for this purpose. His theory of eclecticism is some- 
what in disfavor to-day; but his introduction of the German 
philosophers through the medium of his own eloquent style 
had an important influence on the French philosophy of his 
times. As professor in the Sorbonne, his lectures aroused the 
greatest enthusiasm. These were afterwards published under 
the title, Bur le fondement des idees absolues du vrai, du 
beau et du Men, This book contains a kind of condensation 
of his doctrines, and has become a classic for the beauty of 
its style and thought. Briefly, his philosophy was deduced 
from what he held to be the partial truths embodied in the 
four systems of materialism, spiritualism, skepticism, and 
mysticism. The student of literature will be more interested 
in his stimulating Biographies of seventeenth-century per- 
sonages, written as a recreation when he had passed the age 
of sixty. His passionate regard for one of his subjects, 
though no longer in the flesh — the lovely Duchesse de Longue- 
ville — has been the occasion for some chaffing on the part of 
his literary contemporaries. 

Pierre Paul Royer-Collard (1763-1845) was the chief of 
the doctrinaires, among whom are numbered Guizot, Cousin, 
and Jouffroy. 

Auguste Comte (1798-1856), the founder of Positivism, 
indicated his purpose in the motto: Reorganiser, sans Dieu 
ni roi, par le culte systematique de I'humanite. His Cours 
de philosophie positive, which contains a very lucid exposition 
of his system, is one of the principal philosophical works of 
the nineteenth century; his influence, unlike that of his con- 
temporaries, persists to the present day. When Comte created 
positive philosophy (in which phenomena, observed and 
classified, replace theological and metaphysical speculation), 
Emile Littre (1801-81) was one of his most zealous dis- 
ciples ; but when Comte took to mysticism Littre rebelled, and 
eventually succeeded him as the head of the positivist school. 

Here we may speak of Joseph Joubert (1754-1824), who 
belongs more properly to literature than do some of the 

452 



PHILOSOPHERS 

writers just enumerated. The underlying thought of his Pen- 
sees — when those thoughts are concerned with ethics — is that 
nothing in the moral world is lost, just as in the material 
world nothing is actually destroyed. Joubert's " Thoughts " 
take a very wide range. All his studious, contemplative life 
was devoted to compressing his reflections on literature, 
morals, affairs, into the nutshells of his polished and incisive 
paragraphs. They are essays in miniature — keen, clear, 
judicious — in which the critical faculty is very highly de- 
veloped, and the talent for compression perhaps unexampled. 

Joseph Ernest Renan (1823-92) — acknowledged chief of 
the school of critical philosophy in France — has, because of 
his profound knowledge, been compared to Montaigne; like 
Montaigne, his exhaustive researches in the field of thought 
led him to the same conclusion: " What do I know? " Edu- 
cated by priests, and, for a time, entertaining some notion 
of entering the priesthood, his inquiring and scientific spirit 
soon led him beyond the pale of orthodox religion. He re- 
mained, however, as Anatole France has phrased it, in posses- 
sion of a faith that did not possess him. Lacking convictions, 
he was swayed by sentiment; he could not escape the 
memories and impressions of his early training. As he him- 
self says in the delightful Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse 
(one of the permanent contributions to French literature), 
these memories of his youth came back to him like the bells 
of a lost city rung under water. 

Kenan's scholarship and broad literary sympathies were 
united to a charm and warmth of style that is not only agree- 
able to the critical intelligence, but to popular taste as well. 
The Vie de Jesus, written after a visit to Syria, contains 
passages representative of the unorthodox views that cost 
him the chair of Hebrew in the College de France; but its 
circulation was enormous, and was the foundation of his 
popularity. This work was the first in a series of seven (1863- 
1881), with the general title, Histoire des Origines du Chris- 
tianisme, the other separate titles being: Les Apotres; L' An- 
tichrist; St. Paul et sa Mission; Les Evangiles et la seconde 
generation cliretienne; L'Eglise chretienne; Marc-Aurele. 
These were followed (1888-94) by what is really the intro- 
duction to the series — the five volumes of the Histoire du 

453 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

peuple d' Israel. In the interval, his fancy, philosophy and 
satire found an outlet in the less worthy dramatic composi- 
tions collected under the title of Drames Philosophiques, and 
embracing Caliban, L'Eau de Jouvence, L'Abbesse de Jouarre, 
Le P ret re de Nemi. 

In an admirable sketch of M. Renan by the late Theodore 
Child, 1 we are told that Renanism, among other things, stands 
for ' ' a refined skepticism so delicately developed that it trans- 
forms itself into an instrument of pleasure. . . . The basis 
of dilettanteism is the doctrine of the legitimacy of many 
points of view; or, in other words, the consciousness that 
phenomena are too numerous to allow us to make absolute 
and exclusive affirmations, at least with our present intel- 
lectual apparatus. . . . Great and exquisite as may be the 
joys procured by dilettanteism, they are of a noncreative 
and unvisible kind. . . . We should be tempted to call atten- 
tion to the harmony of M. Renan 's physical and intellectual 
personality, and to compare that great shapeless body to 
some huge polyp or anemone, floating helplessly in the sea 
of probabilities, rising or sinking, inclining to the right or 
to the left, as instinct or a ray of sunlight or the hazards of 
a current may inspire; but in any case merely floating, and 
otherwise incapable of choosing a direction or following it." 

Renan found much to amuse him in the human comedy; 
but Taine — his moral and temperamental antithesis — was 
horrified and saddened by it. Renan 's optimism was the 
product of his physical nature, of sentiment, of a skepticism 
tolerant and easy-going; Taine 's pessimism arose from the 
operations of an intellect absorbed in scientific classification 
and committed to a system from which the emotions are rig- 
idly excluded. With a passion for formula and abstraction, 
and a mind committed to materialistic doctrines, he sought 
to explain all the productions of literature and art with ref- 
erence to " the race, the environment, and the moment." 
From a nation 's climate, food, period of production, he would 
undertake to deduce its poetry and its paintings. His famous 
formula, that " virtue and vice are products, like sugar and 
vitriol," so shocked the Academy (in 1863) that he was not 

1 Harper's Magazine, August, 1892. 
454 



PHILOSOPHERS 

admitted to membership in that body until 1878. In philos- 
ophy and criticism he was the representative of his period, 
applying to these the same general principles of minute fi- 
delity that Flaubert employed in the novel, Meissonier in 
painting, and the Parnassiens in poetry. But though he 
inspired the naturalistic school of novel writers, it is too much 
to say that their sins are on his head. Indeed, one of his 
most valorous champions was M. Brunetiere, who, having 
no love for Zola, perceived in Taine's determinist doctrines 
merely the unbiased, objective attitude of the naturalist who 
excludes, for intellectual purposes, every esthetic or moral 
consideration. Taine's honor and glory, according to this 
distinguished critic, of Catholic faith, rest in this: that he 
" renewed the methods of criticism/ ' and helped to escort 
literature from the nebulous regions of exaggerated Romanti- 
cism to the solid ground of reality. Taine's supreme test in 
estimating the value of a work was the " degree of benefi- 
cence of its character.' ' Not Victor Cousin himself, re- 
marks M. Brunetiere, has said as much. " They simply ar- 
rived at analogous conclusions by wholly different roads." 

To the American reader, Hippolyte Taine (1828-93) is 
perhaps the best known of all the modern French critics and 
philosophers. His Histoire de la litterature anglaise (1865), 
admirably translated by Van Laun, has been vigorously at- 
tacked because of its generalizations, and because it is only 
nominally a history. On the other hand it has been, and 
will long continue to be, a vadc mecum for innumerable read- 
ers, young and old, who delight in an author never dull yet 
never sensational, learned yet always clear, whose opinions 
are never ex-cathedra, who is brilliant without pedantry, and 
forceful without dogmatism. 

Among the other principal productions of his immensely 
active and vigorous life are: Les Philosophes classiques du 
XIX me Siecle en France (1856) ; Notes sur Paris, ou Vie et 
Opinions de Thomas Graindorge (1857) a charming book — 
a humoristic and satirical criticism of Parisian society; 
Notes sur VAngleterre (1872) ; and De V Intelligence, his prin- 
cipal philosophical work. His several works on the Philoso- 
phic de VArt are the product of his celebrated course of lec- 
tures at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. 

455 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

The war of 1870 transformed the philosopher into an 
historian, and henceforth Taine determined with patriotic 
fervor to uproot the causes of France's defeat, which gave 
rise to his most important work Origines de la France contem- 
poraine (1875-90), comprising L'Ancien Regime, La Revo- 
lution and the unfinished Le Regime Moderne. In this work 
Taine points out that the French Revolution was a misfortune 
for France and severely criticises the Jacobin and Napoleon 
regimes. He also derogates the motto of the French Repub- 
lic: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. 

Taine learned English as a boy from an uncle who had 
lived in America. When he was fourteen he devised a scheme 
of study, to which he rigorously adhered and afterwards ap- 
plied with all the power of his brilliant mind. M. Vacherot, 
director of studies at the Ecole Normale, predicted that he 
would be a savant — that, like Spinoza, he would " live in 
order to think." Taine, indeed, was " an intellect. " His 
one recreation appears to have been music; but his devotion 
to that art can hardly be said to have been emotional. It is 
altogether characteristic of him that in praising a sonata by 
Beethoven he remarked, with well-restrained rapture: " It's 
as beautiful as a syllogism/ ' 



CHAPTER XXXII 

HISTORIANS 

One of the greatest achievements of the nineteenth cen- 
tury in France was the impulse to historical study, and its 
consequent evolution first as romantic literature and, later, 
as a critical science. The treatment of history as a science 
was quite unknown at the outset of the century; history, in 
fact, even in its general aspects, was scarcely comprehended 
at all. The Greeks and Romans were known chiefly in re- 
lation to classical literature; the people of the Orient were 
little more than a myth; even the history of France was im- 
perfectly studied and understood. 

The awakening began with the romantic interest of Cha- 
teaubriand's Etudes sur la chute de V Empire romain and his 
Analyse raisonnee de VHistoire de France; and with the popu- 
larity of Sir Walter Scott's historical novels. Nowadays we 
do not go to fiction for our history; we are warned even to 
accept with caution such sugar-coated facts as the novelist 
provides. But at the time of which we speak, romance, as 
the great Scotchman purveyed it, was hailed as the hand- 
maiden of true history. Indeed, Villemain — the master critic 
of his school— told his Sorbonne audience (enamored of 
Sir "Walter) that history was less true than the historical 
novel. Which may be taken as in some sort supplementary 
to the epigram attributed to Napoleon — that " history is fic- 
tion agreed upon." 

With Ivanhoe and Les Martyrs as a leaven, we see also, in 
the years of the Restoration, the ferment of intelligence work- 
ing in the wars along with imagination to evoke a lesson no 
less than a pageant from the chronicles of the past — scholar- 
ship was admitted to new privileges — rubbing elbows with 
men of affairs, and burrowing in the archives of the state, 
hitherto closed to the people. 

457 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

This passion for historical reconstruction produced three 
schools of historians: the narrative school— devoted to accu- 
racy of narration and local detail — of which de Barante, with 
his Histoire des dues de Bourgogne, is the conspicuous repre- 
sentative; the philosophical school of Thierry, de Sismondi, 
Guizot, who endeavored to establish the connection of cause 
and effect in historical events; and the fatalistic school, of 
which Thiers and Mignet were the chiefs. This somewhat 
arbitrary classification does not include Michelet — the most 
remarkable historian of them all considered with relation to 
literature — a man whose glowing imagination and extraor- 
dinary style set him apart from and above the more sober and 
scientific chroniclers of the past. 

The real founders of the new historical school were 
Thierry and Guizot — the first historians who laid stress on 
the social and political development of the people, instead 
of centering attention on the royal families and the dynastic 
wars. We observe the application of this new method — made 
possible by the Revolution — in the Lettres sur I'histoire de 
France of Augustin Thierry (1795-1856). Thierry himself 
has told us the impression made on his boyish imagination 
by a page of Chateaubriand's Martyrs. In his enthusiasm he 
arose, chanting the song: Pharamond! Pharamond! nous 
avons combattu avec Vepee — and marching to its rhythm. 
From that moment he was determined to be an historian. 
Thierry's style in the Histoire de la Conquete de V Angleterre 
par les Normands is almost dramatic; by the vividness of 
his descriptive powers he makes the dead past live again. Yet 
the scientific nature of his work is one of its greatest merits; 
it is, first of all, based on the patient and scholarly examina- 
tion of chronicles and ancient documents. He was a breaker 
of new ground, and his ceaseless researches and study of old 
manuscripts so affected his eyesight that he became totally 
blind. To this affliction he resigned himself without a mur- 
mur, saying, J'ai fait amitie avec les tenebres (I made a friend 
of darkness). Nor did it curtail his labors. Such men as 
Paul-Louis Courier, Carrel, Beranger, lent him their assist- 
ance ; the young woman he married became his devoted secre- 
tary — reading aloud to him, sometimes for fifteen hours a 
day. Thus, with his epic imagination, he was able to produce 

458 



HISTORIANS 

such masterpieces as the Becits des temps merovingiens (1840) 
— a beautiful and accurate description of France at the very 
beginning of her history, in which he overturned the puerile 
conceptions that had prevailed concerning the first Frankish 
kings. His Dix ans d' etudes historiques and the essay on the 
formation and progress of the Tiers-$tat have the purely his- 
torical rather than the literary flavor. 

Frangois Guizot (1787-1874) — austere, solemn, dogmatic 
— is the philosopher first and last, the interpreter of history in 
the light of theories and ideas. He explains rather than de- 
scribes the tumultuous course of events. Guizot, whose touch 
is heavy, busied himself with literary work during all of his 
useful life ; but he was not primarily a writer, and he did not 
pretend to be. Common sense and a solid array of impos- 
ing facts philosophically presented are the uppermost quali- 
ties in those vast syntheses, the Histoire generate de la civili- 
sation en Europe, and the Histoire de la civilisation en 
France. He is the founder of political and social history in 
France. Aside from his own personal contributions to the 
subject, he greatly stimulated historical research during his 
term of office as minister of public instruction; committees 
were appointed, the state archives were overhauled, and their 
precious contents scrutinized, edited, printed. 

Sentiment has no place in the oratory and writings of 
Guizot, yet his private life discloses a pretty romance. Hear- 
ing that two distinguished women, Madame de Meulan and 
her daughter, were in pecuniary distress, owing to Mademoi- 
selle de Meulan 's illness, which incapacitated her as a regular 
contributor to the Publiciste, Guizot himself (then a youth of 
twenty) wrote an article, in her style, and sent it to her with 
an explanatory letter signed " Inconnu." He followed it 
up with similar contributions, until she had recovered her 
strength. These articles duly appeared in the Publiciste, be- 
ginning with the issue of March, 1807, and were signed with 
the initial " F." Eventually the ladies discovered the iden- 
tity of the man who had committed this gallant fraud, and a 
few years later Pauline de Meulan became Madame Guizot. 

Guizot, who was ambassador to London, and afterwards 
prime minister, was greatly respected for his honesty and 
disinterestedness. His last words to his grandchildren were: 

459 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

' ' Serve your country. The task is sometimes hard ; but serve 
your country well." 

Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), eulogist of his countrymen, 
whose failings are not apparent to him, was the first historian 
to deal with questions of finance, diplomacy, and administra- 
tion. He was the political rival of Guizot, from whom he dif- 
fered in the faculty of his talent and the fertility of his ex- 
pedients. His Histoire de la Revolution frangaise, completed 
when he was but thirty years of age, made him famous, and 
holds its place with his trustworthy Histoire du Consulat et de 
V Empire, a work remarkable as a narrative, but somewhat in- 
ferior from a philosophical or scientific standpoint. Like 
Mignet, he was a fatalist. The historian par excellence of 
affairs, his style is simple, clear, and natural. Thiers was alone 
among the deputies of the Chamber in opposing the declara- 
tion of war against Prussia. But later the wisdom of his 
course, as seen in the perspective of national humiliation, was 
acknowledged, and he was chosen President of the Republic. 
To him belongs the glory of extinguishing the revolutionary 
spirit of the Commune, and of freeing French territory from 
foreign occupation. 

Frangois Mignet (1796-1884) in his Histoire de la Revolu- 
tion frangaise produced a work that has been widely trans- 
lated (in Germany alone it has had six translators), and is 
regarded as the best of the brief histories on the subject. His 
style is the reverse of picturesque, his distinctive merit con- 
sisting in his talent for condensation. He treats the Revolu- 
tion as a natural and inevitable development. Among his 
other works are three concerned with important episodes of 
modern history: La Conquete de la Germanie au Christia- 
nisme, La Formation territoriale de la France, and La Re- 
forme. 

Jules Michelet (1798-1874), of whom it has been said that 
he combined the learning of a Benedictine monk with the 
humorous fancy of a poet, is one of the most brilliant and 
original writers of modern prose. His style, which has been 
likened to that of Hugo and Carlyle, is spasmodic, but highly 
decorative, picturesque, and vivid. His power of visualiza- 
tion, the sympathy and intensity of his mind, are such, that 
he reanimates the past, and makes the dead walk again. An 

460 



HISTORIANS 

historian with such a temperament is not without his faults, 
and Michelet's faults are palpable. He was a priest hater, 
an Anglophobe, an uncompromising democrat. For the Jes- 
uits he entertained much the same feeling the devil is sup- 
posed to have for holy water. This passion, indeed, so grew 
with what it fed upon that it distorted his later work. In 
the earlier volumes of his elaborate Histoire de France (which 
appeared at intervals from 1833 to 1867) his imagination and 
literary skill were supremely employed in his account of the 
Middle Ages. But from the time of his attacks on the clergy, 
in the early forties, in which he was associated with Edgar 
Quinet, his historical manner suffered from his vehemence. 
He apologized for his sympathetic treatment of mediaeval 
times, and forthwith produced a Histoire de la Revolution 
Frangaise that is altogether unreliable. 

Aside from his great history (for great it is in spite of its 
defects), Michelet wrote a number of poetical and imagina- 
tive studies in physical science and sociology that are charac- 
teristic of his genius. Among them are: La Mer, La Mon- 
tagne, L'Oiseau, L' Amour, La Sorciere. These studies were 
the product of his self-imposed exile in Brittany and on the 
Riviera, after his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to 
Napoleon, in 1851, had cost him his government offices. 

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), whose dispassionate and 
penetrating study of American institutions, La Democratic 
en Amerique, has become a classic, came to the United States 
with the primary object of studying our prison system. His 
later work, of equal importance, L'Ancien Regime et la Re- 
volution is a philosophical exposition of the subject exact 
in research and illuminating in treatment. In elegance and 
directness of style he resembles Montesquieu, and his " De- 
mocracy in America " has been called a continuation of the 
Esprit des lois. 

Fustel de Coulanges (1830-89), who, according to Lan- 
son, is a great historian and a great writer, is distinguished 
by his La Cite Antique and the Histoire des institutions poli- 
tiques de Vancienne France — profound and comprehensive 
studies of ancient societies written in a concise style of severe 
simplicity. 

Lanfrey has contributed an iconoclastic history of Napo- 

461 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

leon; Henri Martin an elaborate and impartial history of 
France. A belated, but notable publication is the Memoires 
of Madame de Remusat. The last years of the nineteenth 
century teem with historical works of no mean order, written 
for the most part in the modern naturalistic and scientific 
manner that is or is not, as the case may be, associated with 
the literary faculty in the highest sense of that term. We 
may mention the Due de Broglie's facile recountal of 
eighteenth-century intrigues of the court: Le Secret du Roi, 
Louis XV, Marie-Therese ; Albert Sorel's descriptions of 
diplomacy in revolutionary times; Thureau Dangin's admir- 
able narrative, La Monarchie de Juillet, and the eighteenth- 
century studies of Ernest Lavisse. In conclusion, there are 
critics who lean to the view of our own Professor Wells, when 
he says : ' ' The naturalistic evolution has doubtless been a gain 
to history as a science, but it has been at the cost of its lit- 
erary value. . . . Never have single movements or periods 
been studied with more zeal or acumen; yet our diligent in- 
vestigators do not command the place in literature nor in 
popular esteem that was won by their romantic predecessors. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

CRITICS 

" La critique est aisee et l'art est difficile/ ' wrote Des- 
touches, who, it is needless to say, was no critic, but a play- 
wright. Destouches, writing a century before modern criti- 
cism had cut loose from the hard-and-fast traditions of the 
absolute, could not foresee the time when the true critic 
would be denned as ' ' an artist, a philosopher, a moralist — in 
short, something more than a judge.' ' Criticism, indeed, was 
to become a rare and difficult art, no longer employing the 
measuring rule of abstract conventions and rigid formulas, 
but calling for wide sympathies and knowledge, a perception 
and understanding of both men and books. Two centuries 
after the birth of Destouches it was to find in Anatole France, 
himself a creative writer, a practitioner who sees criticism as 
the issue of philosophy and history — " of all literary forms 
the last in date, and eventually absorbing them all." It was 
to make itself felt through the philosophy of men like Renan 
and Taine, and to inspire and stimulate entire schools of 
critics, novelists, poets. In one form or another it was to 
animate and enrich the newspaper and periodical press with 
the standards set by the genius of Gautier and the abiding 
talent of the lively Janin. 

The French critics of the First Empire were Madame de 
Stael, who considered literature in its relation to social in- 
stitutions, and Julien Louis Geoffroy (1743-1814), a dra- 
matic critic of some importance in his day and generation, 
but of no special significance in the development of criticism. 
He is chiefly interesting as the first of the dramatic spe- 
cialists in that department of criticism which the French have 
made their own, its most notable exponents being Jules Janin, 
Jules Lemaitre, and Francisque Sarcey. The severity of 

463 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Geoffroy's criticisms, which were not exclusively dramatic, 
earned for him the surname of " the terrible." A certain 
poet, stung by his attacks, retorted with an epigram addressed 
to the street of Geoffroy-Anier, to which Geoffroy replied with 
these verses : 

Oui, je suis tin anier, sans doute, 
Et je le prouve a coups de fouet, 
Que j 'applique a chaque baudet 
Que je rencontre sur la route. 1 

Under the Restoration criticism began to take an impor- 
tant place in the history of letters. With the triumph of the 
Romantic movement it became a guiding influence that has 
suffered little interruption ; towards the end of the century it 
renewed its vigor and its vogue. Villemain (1790-1870), 
professor of literature at the Sorbonne, was the pioneer of 
the newer academic criticism ; he broadened and humanized 
the critical treatment of history by making it descriptive and 
pictorial. His younger contemporary, D. Nisard (1806-84), 
clung to the old traditions, and did his best to stem the rising 
tide of Romanticism. With these must be mentioned the 
Swiss, Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847), whose methods were 
allied to Nisard 's; Saint-Marc Girardin, who held to a mid- 
dle course; Gustave Planche, an uncompromising dogmatist; 
Philarete Chasles, who discussed English literature with some 
animation of style: E. M. Caro, some of whose interesting 
studies of French writers have found their way into English 
translations; Eugene Geruzez, who left us a short history of 
French literature that has not been excelled in its kind. 

Meanwhile, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-69), 
by far the greatest literary critic that France has yet pro- 
duced, had lent the weight of his great authority and revo- 
lutionary method to the principles espoused by the rebellious 
Romanticists of 1830. In poetry and fiction those principles 
have suffered from the invasions of succeeding creative 
schools, but the critical method inaugurated by Sainte-Beuve 

1 Yes, I am an ass-driver, without doubt, and I prove it with blows of 
the whip which I apply on every donkey that I meet on the road. 

464 



CRITICS 

has remained a model that no assault of dogmatism has under- 
mined. That method consisted, in the first place, in ignoring 
the traditional rules and theories to which the various kinds 
of literature were supposed to conform, and in taking into 
consideration the author's purpose and particular accom- 
plishment, without reference to an artificial standard. Re- 
jecting such a standard, Sainte-Beuve arrived at his estimate 
through a catholic and universal view of literature, fortified 
by tolerance and sound taste. In the second place, his criti- 
cism took into account the life of the writer, and the special 
circumstances attending the production of his work. It was 
biographical criticism in the best sense — a kind of natural his- 
tory of each author's genius. His works comprise some fifty 
volumes, including the comprehensive Histoire de Port-Royal. 
He was the Boileau of his century, and his critical essays — 
many of them first published in the columns of the press — 
dominated the literary judgments of the times. The seven vol- 
umes of the Portraits litteraires and the thirteen volumes of 
the Causeries du lundi contain estimates— masterly and sym- 
pathetic—of nearly all the great French writers, together 
with many foreign ones. 

French criticism has met with the reproach that however 
brilliant and sound it may be, it suffers in a measure from 
that national conservatism, or self-sufficiency, which judges 
the literature of France according to its own standards, and 
without knowledge of foreign productions. One of the critics 
who does not fall under this reproach is Edmond Scherer 
(1815-89), whose numerous studies of contemporary writers 
— contributed to various French journals — possess a special 
value. Scherer had strong and singular prejudices, and cer- 
tain limitations of sympathy that disqualified him as a critic 
of more than one great writer who offended his notions of 
propriety and ordered genius; but, if one keeps in view his 
pet animosities, he will be seen to rank among the foremost 
of the critical fraternity. 

The critical work of Renan and Taine has been touched 
upon in preceding pages. No critic of their stature has 
arisen in the France of to-day; but this special function of 
letters is brilliantly discharged by Anatole France, Jules 
Lemaitre, and Emile Faguet. In Anatole France the dil- 
31 465 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ettantism of Renan is perpetuated in a style charming for 
its grace and effective in its insinuating irony ; his criticisms— 
mainly allied to journalism — are in part collected in the two 
volumes of La Vie litteraire. Lemaitre is, above all, the apostle 
of cleverness; the scintillations of his style, as first exhibited 
in the literary essays collected under the title, Les Contem- 
porains (1886), captured the Parisian fancy. In the numer- 
ous volumes of Impressions de theatre are assembled the 
opinions of a dramatic critic who has made the stage his 
pretext for lively dissertations upon society — the essays of a 
witty moralist whose actual value as a censor of life and art 
is still to be determined. Very different in manner is 
Lemaitre 's successor as dramatic critic on the Journal des 
Debats—the sober and scholarly Faguet, whose analytic 
method is a compromise between the severity of Brunetiere 
and the temperamental transcriptions of the impressionists. 
His studies of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, eighteenth, and nine- 
teenth-century writers are his most important work. 

In the death of Ferdinand Brunetiere (1849-1907) 
French letters lost a critical leader whose influence on con- 
temporary thought was very considerable. M. Brunetiere 
in his methods was the antithesis of the school represented by 
Anatole France. His cardinal qualities are logic, learning, 
and a rigorous habit of mind that tolerates no trifling by the 
decadents of literature. He stood for the best traditions of 
the Revue des Deux-Mondes, with which he was so long 
associated, and his great erudition, loftiness of purpose and 
intellectual grasp were respected even by those who attacked 
him because of his dogmatism and somewhat pedagogic 
attitude. M. Brunetiere 's logical powers, capacity for syn- 
thesis, and k solid literary attainments find their highest ex- 
pression in his comprehensive Evolution des Genres dans 
VHistoire de la Litterature Frangaise. Some acquaintance 
with his copious output of essays is needful to those readers 
who would rightly observe the various forces at work in 
modern France. 

The doctrinal and the impressionistic schools of critics 
have for twenty years waged a controversy always acute and 
occasionally bitter. In illustration of their opposing attitudes 
a French writer offers this example: Two spectators witness 

466 



CRITICS 

a performance of the melodrama, ' ' The Two Orphans. ' ' Both 
are moved to tears. One of them says: " I have been in- 
terested, touched; I have wept: therefore, this play is a 
masterpiece." He is an impressionist. The other one says: 
' * It is true I have wept ; doubtless I would weep if I returned 
to-morrow. Nevertheless, on reflection, I must tell myself 
that the devices employed by the author to make me weep are 
artificial, and that there is in his play only the appearance 
of human truth. It is not, then, a literary work. ' ' This critic 
is a doctrinaire. 

Faguet says : ' ' The flood of critical literature of the nine- 
teenth century is one of the scourges of this period, and in 
the eyes of posterity it will appear ridiculous that the nine- 
teenth century produced fewer books in the proper sense of 
the word than books dedicated to their criticism. But all real 
novelty incurs this misfortune, and in our day there is a 
deluge of critical works, just as in the seventeenth century 
there was a deluge of tragedies, and in 1830 of elegiac verse. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE MODERN DRAMA 

Corneille, Racine, Voltaire not only dominated the stage 
in their day, but held unchallenged sway over the theater- 
going public until 1827, when the insurrectional proclamation 
in the Preface de Cromwell heralded the romantic drama — 
11 everything which is in nature is in art. ,, The classicists 
were only for a time obscured, but tragedy as a genre was 
lost in this vigorous and trivial form of the melodrama. 

The apparent great victory of Romanticism had but an 
ephemeral existence, however, and with the failure of Les 
Burgraves in 1843, it suffered a rapid decline; Racine and 
Corneille, momentarily eclipsed, were restored to favor, and 
shone with enhanced beauty through the marvelous interpreta- 
tion of the great Rachel. These tragedies still endure, but 
the dramas of Hugo are fast becoming obsolete. Hugo's 
conception of the truth — the natural combination of the sub- 
lime and the grotesque which must meet in the drama as they 
occur in life and in creation — characterizes his entire drama- 
turgy. Of the many dramatists: de Vigny, de Musset, 
Alexandre Dumas pere, Prosper Merimee, who followed in 
Hugo's footsteps, not one has been able to hold the stage. A 
decadence began and melodrama finally sustained only by the 
genial interpretation of great actors deteriorated so markedly, 
that public taste soon turned to the comedy of manners and 
the psychological play. 

Since the time of Victor Hugo, France has produced three 
men whom general consent accords a place above their 
brethren in the long list of her brilliant modern playwrights. 
These three, in the order of critical esteem, are Augier, Dumas 
fils, and Sardou. A rapid survey — less with regard to 
chronology than to other considerations which seem upper- 

468 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

most in an attempt to comprehend the complicated and 
contradictory expressions of the modern French dramatic 
literature — will perhaps suffice to make clear why it is at the 
same time so wondrous and so weak. The circumstance that 
Victorien Sardou x is assigned a niche in the dramatic Pantheon 
as one of the three surpassing playwrights seems at first 
glance to involve a paradox, and to constitute in itself an in- 
dictment of that French dramatic genius which, whatever 
its limitations, outshines by far the rush-candle of sister 
nations. The analytical criticism of a distinguished con- 
tributor to the London Saturday Review, Mr. George Bernard 
Shaw, sums up the notorious defects of M. Sardou 's methods 
in one irreverent word — " Sardoodledom, ' ' an epithet sug- 
gesting in its etymology the reprisal of a Yankee vexed by 
Sardou 's satire L'Oncle Sam (1873). It is not, however, 
American flippancy, but British conservatism that speaks in 
the Saturday Review. The play is Merivale's English version 
of Fedora, with Mrs. Patrick Campbell in the title part. " I 
had seen Diplomacy Dora, and Theodora, and La Toscadora, 
and other machine dolls from the same firm, ' ' says Mr. Shaw. 
" And yet the thing took me aback. To see that curtain 
go up again and again only to disclose a bewildering pro- 
fusion of everything that has no business in a play was an 
experience for which nothing could quite prepare me. The 
postal arrangements, the telegraphic arrangements, the police 
arrangements, the names and addresses, the hours and seasons, 
the tables of consanguinity, the railway and shipping time- 
tables, the arrivals and departures, the whole welter of 
Bradshaw and Baedeker, Court Guide and Post Office Direc- 
tory, whirling round one little incredible stage murder and 
finally vanishing in a gulp of impossible stage poison, made 
up an entertainment too Bedlamite for any man with settled 
wits to preconceive. ' ' 

This depreciation of one of M. Sardou 's most popular and 
thrilling plays 2 was delivered in May, 1895. Lest it seem 

1 Born in Paris, September 7, 1831, died 1908. 

7 "With its superbly tragic end," writes a German critic; with a death 
scene which "begins like a feeble drawing-room plagiarism of the murder 
of Nancy by Bill Sikes, and ends with Gilbertian absurdit}'," remarks the 
spokesman for the Review. 

469 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

an expression of that singular prejudice 1 reproved by Mrs. 
Browning, 2 it is interesting to observe that some years 
antecedent to that date — namely, in May, 1878 — this deprecia- 
tion was anticipated by a confrere of M. Sardou, on the 
occasion of the playwright's admission to the Academy. 
Addressed orally and directly to his human subject, and not 
from the vantage of the critic's office chair, M. Charles Blanc's 
ironic response to M. Sardou 's reception speech was necessarily 
veiled in terms of adroit and subtle raillery that to duller 
apprehensions would have passed for praise. A brief extract 
from this " address of welcome " is worth quoting here for 
more than one reason. It not only sustains the judgment of 
Mr. Shaw, but is a model of that polite criticism which Prof. 
Brander Matthews (to whom we are indebted for the extract) 
long ago held to be the only proper attitude of a critic who 
would also be a gentleman. M. Blanc said : 

" I admire the skillful ordering of the room in which 
passes the action of your characters, the care you take in 
putting each in his place, in choosing the furniture which 
surrounds them, which is always not only of the style required 
— that goes without saying— but significant, expressive, fitted 
to aid in the turns of the drama. . . . The letter! — it plays 
a part in most of your plots; and all of it is important, the 
wrapper as well as its contents. The envelope, the seal, the 
wax, the postage stamp, and the postmark, and the tint of 
the paper and the perfume which rises from it, not to speak 
of the handwriting, close or free, large or small — how many 
things in a letter, as handled by you, may be irrefutable evi- 
dence to betray the lovers, to denounce the villains, and to 
warn the jealous! " 

But though Sardou is a past master of " properties, ' ' a 
' ' supremely skillful contriver and arranger, " a * ' journal- 
istic " playwright, with an eye to what an American manager 
would call " contemporaneous human interest," a theatrical 
prestidigitator whose art consists in diverting your attention, 



1 A prejudice which, in the case of the Saturday Review, intermittently 
breaks out in symptoms of disapproval of things American. 
2 The English have a scornful insular way 
Of calling the French light. — Aurora Leigh. 

470 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

by wit and mystification, from a mechanism otherwise too 
obvious; though he is, as it were, a Deus ex machina, it 
must not be overlooked that he is a great deal more than this. 
His immense and varied output since the early period of 
obscurity and starvation (1850-60) — since his first poetic 
play, La Taverne des Etudiants, was hissed from the stage 
of the Odeon (1854) — has embraced some fifty-five plays of 
many types, ranging through farce, satire, opera, melodrama, 
and the poetic spectacular. If we must put, say Odette, and 
Delia Harding, and Theodora — to name no others — in the 
category of artistic failures, and pass over in silence some 
plays condemned to a failure still more comprehensive, we 
must remember that his best work affords the truest criterion 
of his powers. Rabagas (1871) — in which the dramatist im- 
paled the demagogue on a pen of merciless satire and ridicule 
— is pronounced by a German critic to be " the best political 
comedy since Aristophanes. ' ' Prof. Saintsbury regards it as 
" one of the few comedies of this age likely to become 
classical.' ' Sardou's dominant motive in writing this play 
was to hold up Gambetta, the Republican leader, to ridicule 
and contempt. But the playwright builded better than he 
knew, and the thirst for personal reprisal became, in his 
picture of political hypocrisy, a bid for more than fleeting 
fame. His delightful La Famille Benoiton (1865) is a social 
satire in which he exposes the immoral love for luxury of a 
pleasure-mad family in the days of the Second Empire. In 
the same vein of abounding wit and satire are his first great 
successes, Nos Intimes 1 (1861), Nos Bons Villageois (1866), 
and Fernande (1870). The latter, which is to some extent a 
departure from Sardou's customary technical methods, pic- 
tures " the exquisite elevation of a young soul which has 
preserved itself pure in the midst of all the impurities of 
a gambling hell." Sardou's innocent young women (in 
Seraphine, in Patrie, in Nos bons Villageois, for example) are 
indeed some compensation to the morally fastidious for his 



1 Variously adapted in England and America as "Peril," "Friends or 
Foes? " and " Bosom Friends." The famous love scene in Nos Intimes was 
taken by Sardou from one of his early attempts, submitted to the manager 
of the Gymnase, with the title, Paris a VEnvers. 

•471 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

offenses of bad taste, insincerity, and questionable judgment 
in such plays as Divorgons (1880), Maison Neuve (1866), and 
Les Bourgeois de Pont-Arcy (1878). Dora (1877) — some- 
what mutilated in the English versions — is well known to 
Americans under the title of " Diplomacy.' ' A factor in its 
Anglo-American success was the acting of the Kendals and, 
later, of Charles Coghlan. It is a good specimen of the 
Sardou craftsmanship. As an entertainer pure and simple, 
Sardou has perhaps produced nothing better than Les Pattes 
de Mouche (1860), known to the German stage as " The Lost 
Letter,' ' and in the United States — where it has enjoyed a 
considerable vogue — as ' ' A Scrap of Paper. ' ' * 

Sardou 's endeavors in serious drama of the romantic- 
historical type are represented by several works, of which the 
sixteenth-century play Patrie (1869) — concerned with the 
theme illumined by Motley in his " Rise of the Dutch Re- 
public " — is the best. Patrie proceeded from a profounder 
observation of life and a larger power for historical recon- 
struction than we find in his Thermidor (1891) and his Robes- 
pierre. Provoked by the failure of some of his plays in Paris, 
Sardou confined the production of Robespierre (1899) and 
Le Dante (1903) to London. 

The purely theatrical effectiveness of La Tosca (1887), 
is severely criticised by Jules Lemaitre, who says of Scarpia : 
" He is atrocious; he is of a supernatural atrocity. Do not, 
I beg of you, compare him with Richard III, with Iago, with 
Nero, who are men of parts, complex, artists. ' ' Bernard Shaw 
calls La Gismonda, Sardou 's " latest edition of the Kiralfian 
entertainment . . . and which is surpassingly dreary, although 
it is happily relieved four times by very long waits between 
the acts. ' ' 2 This critical scrutiny by aliens goes back much 

1 The germ of this play is contained in Edgar Allan Poe's short story, 
"The Purloined Letter"; but Sardou, in refuting accusations of culpable 
plagiarism in this and other instances, successfully defended himself in the 
courts. In 1883 he wrote Mes Plagiats by way of reply to such charges. 
As a matter of fact, he has rather preferred to borrow from himself — many 
of his characters and ideas being but slight variations of his earlier works. 

2 See Dramatic Opinions and Essays, by G. Bernard Shaw (Brentano's, 
1906), who further remarks: "The scene being laid in the Middle Ages, 
there are no newspapers, letters, or telegrams; but this is far from being 

472 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

farther than the period of these particular triumphs — namely, 
in 1877 — a British critic of reputation put himself on record 
thus: " Whatever style will best succeed with the public is 
the style of V. Sardou." Quoting Jules Claretie — who calls 
Sardou a " barometer dramatist " — Professor Matthews, 
applying the methods of a dramatic archaeologist and noting 
that Sardou 's plays are written distinctly to suit the taste 
of the moment, suggests that " it would not be difficult for 
anyone familiar with politics and society in France for the 
last score of years to declare the date of almost any of M. 
Sardou 's five-act comedies from a cursory inspection of its 
allusions. ! ' 

With respect to his latest productions, including some flat 
failures, Sardou is perhaps at his happiest when he drops 
melodrama and spectacle, and reverts to farce (historically 
flavored) as in Madame Sans-Gene 1 (1893). The semi-comic 
Napoleon of this play may, it is true, seem little more than 
a lay figure; but Sardou, we believe, had the immediate and 
concrete Mademoiselle Jane Hading in mind, rather than the 
evasive and tantalizing Thalia — and this accomplished actress, 
together with Miss Ellen Terry, has doubtless justified to 
many persons the plan of " writing around " an individual 
player. 

Professor Saintsbury calls Sardou " a Beaumarchais, 
partly manque " — an expression which we can translate only 
by availing ourselves of the American vernacular — a near- 
Beaumarchais. A survivor of his period and his group, he 
has taken no part in shaping anew the unknown destinies of 
the French drama, and cannot be put on the same level as 
Dumas and Augier. 

In view of the recent propaganda by certain zealous 
Frenchmen, who are fearful that Americans derive their no- 
tions of French domestic life from the popular novel of 

an advantage, as the characters tell each other the news all through, except 
when a child is dropped into a tiger's cage as a cue for Madame Bernhardt's 
popular scream; or when the inevitable stale, puerile love scene is turned 
on to show off that voix celeste stop which Madame Bernhardt, like a 
sentimental New England villager with an American organ, keeps always 
pulled out." 

1 Written, as was Clcopdtre, in collaboration with M. Emile Moreau. 

473 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

intrigue, it does not seem likely that the plays of Alexandre 
Dumas fits would be recommended by them as representative 
of the national genius. Yet the younger Dumas (1824^95) 
was, by intention, a moralist and reformer first of all, and, 
within the narrow limitations of his choice of subjects, he 
succeeded in establishing for himself a reputation second 
only to that of Augier. French criticism has reproached 
English literature in some of its most cherished manifestations 
with the fault of didacticism, yet it would be hard to discover 
a more complete example of art with an ethical purpose than 
is afforded by the preaching playwright, Alexandre Dumas 
fits. It was a tendency in which the elder Dumas, given over 
to romanticism, saw, or affected to see, the ultimate ruin of 
his son's reputation. Francisque Sarcey took it less seriously. 
He perceived very clearly that the younger man's superb 
craftsmanship, and his ability to write brilliant, telling 
dialogue, outweighed his shortcomings as a profound ex- 
ponent of human life. Sarcey pointed out that the astonish- 
ing prefaces to the printed plays are ' ' a chaos of clear ideas ' ' 
— that is to say, an assemblage of ideas without logical rela- 
tion. He saw in Dumas an agitator rather than a philosopher ; 
but — " he stirred up a great many questions; he drew upon 
them our distracted attention; he compelled us to think of 
them. Therein he did his duty as a dramatist. " 

Curiously enough, Dumas is best known to Americans by 
his first and weakest play, La Dame aux Camelias (1848), 
which was performed at the Vaudeville only after successive 
rejections. Camille, as it is known to us in the Anglicized, 
and somewhat Bowdlerized, versions, is a sentimental idealiza- 
tion of the courtesan; and probably owes its enduring popu- 
larity to the opportunities it affords " emotional " actresses. 
It is interesting to recall that Paris theatrical managers of 
the mid-nineteenth century regarded it as rather too shock- 
ing for Paris audiences; but it met with an instantaneous 
success, due in a measure to its departure from cut-and-dried 
traditions of characterization. 

Dumas had already written a book of youthful poems, and 
several novels of some merit; but his fame as a playwright 
has quite eclipsed the Aventures de Quatre Femmes et d'un 
Perroquet (1847), the Affaire Clemenceau (1846), and 

474 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

Tristan le Roux (1849). La Dame aux Camelias had first 
appeared as a novel, and as such it is still widely read ; Dumas 
tells us that it took him just eight days to transform it into 
a play. In 1853 he attempted to follow up his first dramatic 
success by dramatizing his novel, Diane de Lys, written in 
1851 ; he was so far successful that he was enabled to work at 
his leisure on Le Demi-Monde (1855). This play, which some 
readers will recognize under the title of " The Crust of 
Society, ' ' is perhaps his most important work. The term ' ' de- 
mi-monde " was invented by him to describe a social class (la 
classe des declassed), " who wish to have it believed that 
they have been what they are not, and who do not wish to 
appear what they are." But in spite of the author's attempt 
to force his definition on the public, the term demi-monde is 
usually applied to that class of women known as femmes 
galantes. The author's conception of the term is clearly 
brought out in the following celebrated passage from Le Demi- 
Monde, an example of the playwright 's brilliant style : 

" Raymond. — In what world are we? In truth, I do 
not understand it at all. 

" Olivier. — Ah, my dear fellow, it is necessary to live for 
a long time in intimacy with the Parisian world to under- 
stand its various shades; and even then it is not easy to 
explain matters. Do you care for peaches? 

" Raymond. — Peaches? Yes. 

" Olivier. — Very well. Go to a fruiterer, to Chevez or 
Potel, and ask for his best peaches. He will show you a basket 
containing magnificent specimens of fruit, placed at some 
distance one from the other, and carefully separated by 
partitions, so that they will not touch each other, and become 
spoiled by contact. Ask the price, and he will say, ' Twenty 
sous a piece,' I suppose. Look, then, and you will surely 
see in the neighborhood of this basket another basket filled 
with peaches just as fine in appearance as the first, only 
placed closer together, and so arranged that they cannot be 
seen from all sides, which the dealer has not offered you at 
all. Say to him, ' How much are these? ' He will answer, 
' Fifteen sous.' You will naturally ask him why these 
peaches, as large, as fine, as ripe, as appetizing, cost less than 
the others. Then he will take up one at random most deli- 

475 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

cately, and poising it between two fingers, he will turn it and 
will show you a small black spot which is the cause of the 
inferior price. Well, my dear fellow, you are now in the 
basket of peaches at fifteen sous. The women by whom you 
are surrounded have all committed some indiscretion in the 
past; each one has a blot on her fair name. You see them 
close together, so they are as little conspicuous as possible. 
And thus, with the same birth, the same appearance, the same 
tastes as the women of society, they are not of them, but 
compose what we may call the demi-monde, which is neither 
the aristocracy nor the bourgeoisie, but forms a floating island 
in the ocean of Parisian life, and recruits itself from those 
who have fallen, those who seek refuge here, all who have 
come here from two continents, whom one meets everywhere, 
who have come, one knows not from where. ' ' 

The early environment of Dumas determined in a measure 
his selection of dramatic themes. An illegitimate son, his 
schools days were embittered by the cruel gibes of his com- 
panions; and it is not surprising that in later years he fre- 
quently employed his pen to secure the rights of the illegiti- 
mate child. His prefaces to La Femme de Claude (1873), 
and L' Affaire Clemenceau are eloquent on the subject. In 
his preface to Monsieur Alphonse (1873), a typical concep- 
tion, he says: " In the midst of the diverse horrors arising 
from human cupidity and human stupidity, there is but one 
creature deserving of continuous and repeated, and incessant 
aid, because, when in misery, it is rendered so wholly without 
any fault of its own— the child/ ' His material for La Dame 
aux Camelias was gathered at first hand during the days of 
tumultuous experience, before he was confronted with the 
problem of earning a living. Thereafter the problem play, 
rather than the play of sheer sentimentality, engaged his 
energies ; and, in one form or another, the problem was much 
the same — woman in her sexual relation to man. An avowed 
preacher and reformer, no one has yet discovered that he 
formulated a consistent code of ethics. His raisonneur — the 
character put forward in each of his plays as a mouthpiece 
for his arguments — assumes protean shapes. In Les Idees de 
Madame Aubray (1867) Dumas inculcated the duty of the 
seducer to marry his victim. In La Femme de Claude, the in- 

476 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

junction is a repetition of his advice to hoodwinked husbands 
(as set forth in his pamphlet, L'Homme-Femme a year 
earlier) : " Tue-la! "* The various plays in which the hus- 
band, wife, or lover — as the case may be — is killed would re- 
quire some tabulation. ' ' More attracted, ' ' says Jules Lemai- 
tre, " by the moral question, than by life itself, and occupied 
in comprehending life rather than in depicting it, it follows 
that the plays of M. Dumas have too much of the personality 
of M. Dumas." 

From the Anglo-Saxon point of view, it can hardly be said 
that Dumas " saw life steadily and saw it whole." In a 
greater degree even than most of the other modern French 
playwrights he saw it as it is reflected from a certain angle 
in Paris. Meanwhile the problem play has crossed the 
Channel, where its influence is manifest in the works of some 
of the most eminent English playwrights. That Dumas was 
very much in earnest in his pursuit of an ethical purpose 
cannot perhaps be questioned, but unfortunately, as Doumic 
says, to back his just and even sound ideas, he was often 
paradoxical, and his situations were almost always ticklish 
(scabreuses) . In his preface to TJn pere prodigue (1859) 
Dumas has made a candid confession: " A man may lack 
merit as a thinker, a moralist, a philosopher, an author, 
yet, nevertheless, become a playwright of the first class — 
that is to say, in setting in motion before you the purely 
external movements of humanity. ' ' 

Among other plays of this master craftsman are La Ques- 
tion d f argent (1857) ; Le Fils naturel (1858), one of his most 
effective dramas; L'Ami des femmes (1864), a very strong, 
subtle play written in a superb style; La Supplice d'une 
femme (1865), a three-act play palpitating with movement, 
and^ occupying but an hour and a half in the performance; 
L'Etrangere (1876). Dumas was instrumental in bringing 
about the divorce laws of France (1884). In his introduction 
to L'Etrangere he wrote: " The Chambers need only ratify 
divorce, an immediate result would be the complete transposi- 

1 " Kill her! " The French law, as a matter of fact, permitted a wronged 
husband to take just such summary revenge, and the unwritten law not 
unfrequently does here. 

477 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tion of our stage. The deceived husbands of Moliere and the 
unhappy women of the modern plays, would completely dis- 
appear from the scene. " Denise (1885), is considered one 
of his strongest and most dramatic plays, in which, however, 
repugnant truths are made too aggressively prominent; in 
Francillon (1887), Dumas 's skill in construction is matched 
only by his adroitness in the surprise of the climax. Dumas 
was admitted to the French Academy in 1874. 

Where Dumas, despite, or because of, his brilliant rhetoric, 
falls short as an ethical teacher, Emile Augier (1820-89) 
succeeds by virtue of his larger outlook, his sound morality, 
and his happier and more wholesome treatment of social 
questions. Angier, says a French critic, has a " sanguine " 
temperament. He becomes angry and tranquil, he flies into 
a passion, but he is merciful; Dumas is choleric; he is merci- 
less and takes fierce revenge; Sardou, is above all nervous: 
he has passing caprices and paroxysms of gayety. 

Augier 's art is an inheritance from Moliere and Beau- 
marchais. In the hands of Dumas a delicate and dangerous 
subject was apt to take on the tones of melodrama; under 
Augier 's treatment it became a picture of life. Dumas and 
Sardou 's effects are respectively attained through appeals 
to the emotions and to ingenious devices of plot; Augier 's 
bid for immortality is through the analysis and exposition of 
character. Hence he enjoys a preeminence at home, while 
abroad he is little more than a name. 

Augier rejoiced in a grandfather (Pigault-Lebrun) who 
wrote a great many popular novels now forgotten. To this 
ancestral strain, it is presumed, he owed his literary bent, 
which set him to writing plays before he began to practice 
law, and pretty soon justified his change in the choice of a 
profession. Augier 's great merit lay in his excellent por- 
traiture of French bourgeois society. Common sense was the 
dominant feature in his plays. This tendency did not find 
favor with the critics, led by Theophile Gautier, Vacquerie, 
and other romanticists, who called it " l'ecole du bon sens." 

Augier was above all a man of domestic tastes ; devoted to 
his home, it was the sanctity of the home that he upheld in 
his dramatic work. After a century of ill usage, by French 
dramatists, the husband finally came into his rights on the 

478 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

stage with Augier. While other playwrights were the 
apologists of libertinage, Augier courageously undertook the 
defense of the family and protested against conjugal in- 
fidelity. This spirit animates his plays L'Aventuriere (1848) 
regarded by some critics as his masterpiece, and Gabrielle 
(1849), for which he was awarded the Monty on prize for 
virtue. The latter play called forth cries of admiration for 
the author from the spectators in the words of the play : ' ' 
pere de famille! poete! je t'aime! " 

Augier became famous when he was but twenty-four years 
of age; his play, La Cigue (1844), unanimously rejected by 
the committee of the Theatre-Francais, was triumphantly 
produced at the Odeon. Singularly enough, its classic theme 
(like the subject of his Joueur de flute, written at the same 
period, but not produced till 1850) comprehended the re- 
demption of the courtesan by love. In 1855, when his 
dramatic development had become apparent, it was the false 
sentimentalism in which such a thesis may be enveloped that 
impelled him to counteract Dumas 's Dame aux Camelias with 
his own vigorous and startling Le Manage d'Olympe (1855). 
In this play (which contributed to his election to the French 
Academy) Augier relentlessly exposed the pretensions of the 
" demi-mondaines, ' ' who were attempting to force their way 
into respectable society. The Dame aux Camelias was in line 
with the tendency — made fashionable by Prevost's Manon 
Lescaut, and Victor Hugo's Marion Delorme, and endur- 
ing for a century — to glorify the impure woman. Augier 
presented a far different, and a more convincing portrait in 
that of the adventuress who seeks to besmirch the honor of a 
noble family, and is shot down by the protector of that honor. 

Three of Augier 's plays are accounted classics: Le Gendre 
de M. Poirier (1854), one of the most delightfully and 
naturally sketched pictures of contrasting social ranks — the 
ambitious bourgeois and the ruined aristocrat— and which 
still holds a first place on the roster of the Theatre-Francais ; 
L'Aventuriere (1848), a comedy in verse; and Le Fils de 
Giboyer (1862). The latter play is a sequel to Les Effrontes 
(1861), both plays being directed against corruptible journal- 
ists. In Le Fils de Giboyer, Augier rose to his full height as a 
satirist in what was regarded as an attack on the clerical party, 

479 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

and in which he unhappily slandered the ultramontane jour- 
nalist Louis Veuillot, who answered him in a strong pamphlet, 
Le Fonds de Giboyer. According to Jules Lemaitre, les 
Effrontes is the ' ' most powerful, the liveliest and soundest of 
Augier's comedies. . . . The uprightness of mind and of heart, 
the generous honesty which is, as one generally admits, the 
soul of Augier's entire dramaturgy, is particularly apparent 
in this beautiful, satirical comedy." 

Among Augier's other plays written wholly by himself 
or in collaboration, are Les Lionnes pauvres (1858), with its 
lesson to pleasure-mad, faithless wives; TJn Beau Manage 
(1859) ; La Contagion (1866), in the personality of whose 
adventurous hero, society thought to recognize the Due de 
Moray. Augier's four-act comedy, Madame Caverlet (1875), 
is a masterpiece and a strong defense in favor of divorce. 
Jean de Thommeray (1873), with its touching scene of a 
prodigal son's enlistment in the ranks of his Breton country- 
men marching to the defense of Paris, is taken from a novel 
by Jules Sandeau. Les Fourchambault (1878) had an im- 
mense success; it is concerned with the problem of the rights 
of illegitimate children. After Les Fourchambaidt, Augier 
ceased to write for the stage, feeling that he had put forth 
the best that was in him. Augier never made his art his trade, 
but he had enjoyed a career of uninterrupted success for forty 
years. His first play had been a revelation, writes Pailleron, 
his last, a triumph, and this victor did not even cease con- 
quering when he had stopped writing, for his repertory never 
lost its popularity. Viewed after a lapse of over thirty years, 
not one of his best plays has gone out of favor. Of his 
twenty-seven plays, nine are written in verse, and these nine 
include at least two of his best dramas ; yet it was dramatically 
effective verse rather than great poetry. His prose — better 
suited to plays with modern themes — is both lively and power- 
ful, and is the vehicle for his clear and vigorous thought. 

Augier never posed as a reformer nor as an apostle; he 
never preached nor pleaded, but kept in view the good sound 
moral sense of the people. The strength of a play, he him- 
self said, consists in being the resounding echo of the whisper- 
ings of society, in formulating general sentiments which are 
still vague, and in directing the confused observation of the 

480 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

majority. Of the three or four masters of the stage, notes 
Jean Fleury, Augier was the most human, the finest poised, 
and the one who kept himself best in hand. 

To go back a little: the most popular playwright of the 
nineteenth century in France was one who did not bother 
himself about social problems, or search for the secret springs 
of human action, but simply strove to entertain. Augustin 
Eugene Scribe (1791-1861) was a success in the most com- 
plete commercial sense of the word. He possessed in a super- 
normal degree the faculty of knowing exactly what would 
please the multitude, together with an amazing facility for 
supplying it, and a fertility of production that is almost in- 
credible. Were he living to-day as an American playwright, 
he would be in himself a syndicate, and a rival in wealth to 
our most industrious millionaires. It is said that the self- 
contained actor-manager can " count the house " during the 
progress of a play without losing his cue — Scribe had the 
prophetic vision, and foresaw, as he wrote, the exact relation 
between the box-office returns and the lines or situations that 
he was at that moment contriving. It was not that he was 
wholly mercenary, for no man greedy for money would so 
generously have shared it with his numerous collaborators, 
to some of whom he was indebted only for the merest sugges- 
tions, and to whom he gave freely both the profits and the 
credit of authorship. The truth is, perhaps, that he could 
not help being superficial; he lacked the inspiration and the 
perception of genius, and he made the most of the talents he 
possessed. These included supreme skill in the construction 
of a play, and the gift of entertaining an audience without 
making it think. He preached no false morality, and did 
not sin against good taste ; his virtuous characters were very, 
very good, and his vicious ones never really " horrid." 
People did not sleep during his plays ; but they slept very well 
afterwards. 

The consequence is that Scribe has proved to be as perish- 
able as he was popular. Few of his plays are performed, or 
even remembered to-day. We say few because the pieces to 
his credit number, according to various estimates, from three 
hundred and fifty to five hundred, whereas the titles of the 
more important do not occupy much space in the printing. 
32 481 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

They include Le Mariage d' Argent (1827) ; Bertrand et 
Raton (1833) ; La Camaraderie (1837) ; Le Verre d'Eau 
(1840) ; Vne Chaine (1841) ; Les Contes de la Reine de 
Navarre (1850) ; Bataille de Dames (1851) ; Les Doigts de 
Fee (1858); and Adrienne Lecouvreur (1849), which Is 
concerned with the love of Maurice de Saxe for the famous 
' ' tragedienne ' ' who gives the play its name. The four plays 
last named were written in collaboration with Ernest Le- 
gouve ; * some of those enumerated had their first production 
at the Comedie-FranQaise. 

Scribe's later work is his best; but as early as 1836 the 
French Academy had opened its doors to this prosperous son 
of a silk merchant, who for a matter of forty years was the 
foremost playwright of France. 2 His astonishing variety 
knew no bounds. As a librettist his words are still sung in 
such operas as Auber's Fra Diavolo; Meyerbeer's Les Hugue- 
nots, and L'Africaine; Donizetti's La Favorite, and in other 
musical works less familiar in the current repertory. He com- 
posed farces, melodramas, comedies, without number; he 
essayed the historical drama. He wrote a dozen plays before 
his first success, line Nuit de la Garde Nationale — a one-act 
sketch or vaudeville — produced in 1816. Thereupon he 
devoted himself chiefly to the elaboration of vaudeville, to 
which he gave substance and dramatic form. In the ten years 
of his exclusive connection with the Gymnase theater, he con- 
tributed some one hundred and fifty plays, most of which 
were vaudevilles, or what we would call farce comedies. A 
signal example of his skill was Valerie (1822), a one-act 
vaudeville which, with little change, he divided into three 
acts, and, presto! behold a comedy for the Theatre-Frangais. 
That there was repetition of character and situation in such 
a copious output it would seem to go without saying; yet his 
art resembled a kaleidoscope, in which the same bits of colored 
glass take on innumerable variations in design. 

1 Ernest Legouve, an Academician, wrote the tragedy Medee for the 
great actress, Rachel. 

2 Scribe's imposing Chateau de Sericourt bears the following original 
inscription: 

"Le Theatre a pay6 cet asile champetre; 
Vous qui passez, merci! je vous le dois peut-etre." 

482 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

Meanwhile, tragedy for a moment lifted its head, and 
there was promise of a compromise between Romanticism run 
mad and the classicism it had dethroned. Francois Ponsard 
(1814-67), after attempting a translation of Byron's " Man- 
fred," produced in Lucrece (1843) a tragic drama which won 
the applause of the critics, but in which the fire of genius was 
presently discerned to be only a flicker. His Agnes de Meranie 
(1847) and Charlotte Cor day (1850) likewise burned with an 
intermittent flame; for all Musset's amiable tribute to Pon- 
sard 's poetry, the torch had not been passed on from Corneille. 
It was the expiring cry of tragedy. In France, as elsewhere, 
the modern has sought a less exalted form of expression; 
when the Theatre-Francais feels impelled to invoke the tragic 
muse, it must fall back on the seventeenth-century classics, or 
trust to a Bernhardt to vitalize the antiquated plays of Hugo. 
Ponsard had been hailed as the founder of the " school of 
common sense "; but though he fared somewhat better with 
his comedies, L'Honneur et V Argent (1853) ; La Bourse 
(1856), Le Lion amoureux (1866), an historical study of the 
morals of the Directoire — effective by virtue of vivacious and 
powerful dialogue — he is an interesting memory rather than 
a living tradition. It must not be forgotten, however, that 
Joseph Autran was made an Academician because of his 
tragedy, La Fille d'Eschyle (1848). In the poetic drama, 
Henri de Bornier (1825-1901) met with a great immediate 
success that has by no means endured. Beauty of language 
and loftiness of conception have not sufficed as preservatives 
of La Fille de Roland (1875), in which history was gro- 
tesquely distorted. Its popularity is in part accounted for by 
its political allusions. De Bornier 's Les Noces d'Attila (1880) 
was received with less enthusiasm; dramatic poetry cast in 
the old classic molds, without the divine spark of genius could 
not move a modern audience even when served with political 
sauce. Of Jean Richepin's (1849-) several plays in verse, 
Le Chemineau (1897) has attained more than a fleeting popu- 
larity. The poetic play has in recent years experienced a 
kind of revival in France, and, curiously enough, seems to be 
on even terms with the essays of the naturalistic school. The 
evidence of this taste has been emphatically shown in the case 
of M. Rostand, as we shall presently see. 

483 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Melodrama, from time to time, has had its vogue in 
France. Ere the Romantic movement was precipitated by 
Hugo, Pixerecourt pleased the populace with a number of 
plays quite outside the pale of literature. Then came 
Bouchardy, who in Lazare le Pdtre and other prose dramas 
borrowed something of the plumage worn by the greater 
Romanticists. Dennery, who appeared on the scene about the 
middle of the century, possessed something of Scribe's con- 
structive skill. His melodramas have a wonderful vitality; 
two of them — Don Cesar de Bazan (1844), and Les deux 
Orphelines (1875) (The Two Orphans) — have been popular 
exhibits on the American stage in comparatively recent years. 

Octave Feuillet (1821-90), who lent a hand in the fiction 
factory of the elder Alexandre Dumas, is best known to Amer- 
icans through the translation of his popular tale, Le roman 
d'un jeune homme pauvre, and the play, A Parisian Romance, 
to which the late Richard Mansfield gave a long lease of 
theatrical life by emphasizing the character of Baron Chevrial. 
Feuillet 's reputation rests on much more important work — 
on such novels as i¥. de Cantors (1867), and Julia de Trecoeur 
(1872), which disclosed an agreeable sentiment and style, and 
on his comedies in the manner of Musset. 

The comedy of the mid-century was enlivened by the fre- 
quent contributions of Delphine Gay (Madame de Girardin) , 
the beautiful and brilliant wife of Emile de Girardin. At 
least one of her plays — which include Lady Tartuffe (1853), 
and La Joie fait Peur (1854) — seemed to possess a value that 
would endure. The titular character of Lady Tartuffe dis- 
closed an uncommon creative power, and Madame de Girar- 
din 's humor is still applauded by the fastidious; but pos- 
terity has proved to be ungallant and neglectful of her fame. 

Eugene Labiche (1815-88), the most distinguished pro- 
vider of the broad farce with a literary flavor, had enter- 
tained his audiences for many years before Augier discovered 
in him ' ' the Grand Master of Laughter. ' ' A collected edition 
of his plays was issued in 1897, and the following year the 
French Academy elected him an Immortal. There cannot 
be much difference of opinion as to the literary merits of 
Labiche, but everybody likes him because of his inexhaustible 
and infectious humor coupled with wholesome common sense. 

484 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

It is generally granted that his vaudeville was a great ad- 
vance over that of Scribe, and that no one since Moliere in 
his most frivolous mood had caused such tempests of laughter. 
Labiche made his first success, in 1851, with Le Chapeau de 
Paille d'ltalie; one of the funniest and best known of his in- 
numerable plays is Le Voyage de M. Perrichon. 

A contemporary writer of farces was Edmond Gondinet 
(1828-88), who lacked Labiche 's powers of creation, but 
whose name is still associated with the gayety of the French 
theater in the nineteenth century. The laughable Gavant, 
Minard et Cie, was especially characteristic. 

iSdouard Pailleron (1834-99), the biographer of Augier 
and a poet as well as a playwright, occupies a higher place. 
It is not, alas ! in America alone that the public turns a deaf 
ear to true merit; in Paris also one sometimes hears the ap- 
plause of the groundlings prevail. So Pailleron, during a 
period of twenty years wrote some delightful plays that met 
with indifferent success. But in 1881 (the year of his elec- 
tion to the Academy) his reputation was made secure with 
the performance of Le monde oil Von s'ennuie, a comedy of 
exquisite construction, brilliant wit, and telling satire. 

For the twenty years from 1860 to 1881, Ludovic Halevy 
(1834-1908), and Henri Meilhac (1832-97), supplied the 
French stage with some of its most joyful entertainment in 
the form of operettas, farces, and comedies. In 1858 Halevy 
had already made a reputation as one of the collaborators in 
the libretto for Offenbach's Orpliee aux enfers. In the 
first ten years of the partnership with Meilhac, they jointly 
concocted the Offenbach librettos for La Belle Helene, Baroe 
Blene, La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein, and La Pendicle, 
in which, under cover of satirizing social sins and follies, they 
displayed an aptitude for wit that bordered on indecency. 
Both writers were Parisians to the core, and their gifts of 
humor, fancy, and imagination, found congenial expression 
in airy sketches such as Madame attend Monsieur, Toto chez 
Tata, La Boule. Their one great success in attempting a 
more serious manner was Frou-Frou; in the hands of the ac- 
tress, Aimee Desclee, it made a great sensation, nor has it 
yet lost its vogue. They were also the joint contributors of 
the libretto for Bizet's opera, Carmen, Upon the expiration 

485 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

of the partnership with Meilhac, Halevy displayed his origi- 
nal gifts in two remarkable stories of the Parisian lower 
middle class. The Cardinal family, in Monsieur et Madame 
Cardinal, and Les Petites Cardinal, have become by-words 
for a well-recognized type. Halevy 's bid for an orthodox 
reputation was L'Abbe Const antin (1882), a kind of French 
" Vicar of Wakefield " in which some persons profess to see 
a classic, but which is in reality merely a wholesome story, 
prettily written. As one of the French novels which may 
safely be recommended to the " young lady " for whom 
Dumas fils disdained to write, it has obtained a wide circula- 
tion in our own country. Halevy was made, in consequence 
of this short novel, a member of the French Academy in 1888. 

If Emile Zola's critical endeavors to stir the dramatic 
pool were lacking in any considerable accomplishment, his 
personal attempts to storm the stage were even less effectual. 
Of the dramatizations of his novels only Therese Raquin need 
be noted here. As John Addington Symonds pointed out 
long ago, Zola in his novels was a romanticist, masquerading 
as a realist ; and so in Therese Raquin he betrayed himself as 
a genius whose power was employed in fashioning a repulsive 
melodrama constructed on the outworn traditions. 

Henri Becque (1837-99), was a realist who commanded 
the technical resources of the stage, and left his impress on 
the younger generation. Disdaining claptrap, and never ob- 
truding his opinions in the puppets he infuses with life, his 
plays are vital with truth and human nature. His pessi- 
mism precluded popularity; yet it is the sort of pessimism 
we find interwoven in the tales of the great English novelist, 
Thomas Hardy — a pessimism which consists in regarding men 
and women as the ironical sport of Destiny, and is not forced 
to fit the theories, ideals, or arguments of the playwright or 
fictionist. Becque looked to life rather than to the formulas 
which the dramatists of his day were frantically seeking; 
and his method derives less from naturalism than from 
Moliere and the ancient classical writers. He was a long time 
getting a hearing, and he persisted in the face of many de- 
feats. L' Enfant Prodigue, a vaudeville first performed 
in 1868, is replete with wit and clever characterization. 
L' Enlevement (1898), a problem play, paved the way for 

486 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

Les Corbeaux, performed at the Comedie-Frangaise in 1882, 
and La Parisienne (1885). Of these two comedies, the first 
named is concerned with an impoverished family of women 
who fall a prey to human vultures; the portraiture is admir- 
able, and it is a model of realism at its best. Neither this 
play nor La Parisienne — which presents the domestic " tri- 
angle " without rhetoric or sentimental gloss— was a popular 
success. Becque was too gloomy and too outspoken for the 
Parisians. But time, which adjusts these matters, has decided 
that both plays are of permanent value. 

The influence of the Theatre Libre, founded in 1887 by 
Antoine, is variously estimated. M. Antoine, together with 
the young playwrights of the new school who rallied around 
him, sought to put naked realism on the stage, and to de- 
velop a naturalistic drama free from conventional device and 
restraint. The first performance took place in a passageway, 
near Montmartre, known as the Elysee des Beaux- Arts. It 
may be interjected that this apostle of realism was hospitable, 
in the beginning, to plays of other and diverse kinds. 1 It 
was a " free stage " — independent of the censor because it 
was a private enterprise, supported by subscribers; and so a 
complete test of the new dramatic movement could be made. 
This test seems to have been both a success and a failure. 
Antoine 's admirers remind us that most of the celebrated 
playwrights and actors of the last twenty years served their 
apprenticeship in his theater, and that many of the German 
cities have successfully emulated his example. Gustave Lan- 
son recognizes that Antoine has taught his audiences the sense 
of real dramatic imitation. Other critics say that the ex- 
periment did not proclaim the triumph of realism, that on the 
contrary, the enthusiasts of the Theatre Libre, pushed their 
theories to an extreme: the representatives of the " comedie 
rosse " — Becque, Ancey, Courteline, Jullien, Metenier and 
others — endeavored to dramatize demoralizing human types 



1 Among these plays were La Reine Fiammetta, by Catulle Mendes; Le 
Baiser, a fairy play in verse by Th. de Banville; Une Evasion, by Villiers 
de l'lsle-Adam; L'Ornement des noces spirituelles de Rysbroeck V Admirable, 
of Maeterlinck; La mort du due d'Enghien, by Hennique, and La Patrie en 
danger, by the brothers Goncourt. 

487 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

offensive to public taste; the performances of the free stage 
became gross and repulsive, and, after eight years of an ex- 
periment that attracted wide attention, M. Antoine aban- 
doned it for a time. After an interval, he resumed the ex- 
periment with considerable modifications, at the playhouse 
which since 1897 has been known as the Theatre Antoine, 
Avhich some persons regard as the most interesting theater 
in Paris. 1 

Many of the plays produced at the Theatre Libre (where 
the number of performances of any one piece was rigidly 
restricted) found a welcome elsewhere, and some of the con- 
tributors to its stage were men of an original and striking 
talent. Francois de Curel reverted rather than returned to 
nature when in La fille sauvage (1902), he placed on the 
stage the erstwhile human mate of an Orang-outang; but he 
gained critical approval for his analysis of emotion and his 
dramatic strength in L'Envers d'une Saint e and Les Fossiles. 
Eugene Brieux has come to be accepted as a satirist of a cer- 
tain sort; universal suffrage, charity, and law, are respec- 
tively the targets in L'Engrenage, Les Bienfaiteurs, and La 
Robe Rouge. He has even shot his bolt (in Les Remplagantes) 
at the practice of substituting a wet nurse for the mother. 
George Courteline and George Ancey, in Boubouroche and La 
Dupe were contrivers of a humor styled the ' l comique cruel. ' ' 
It was Courteline who, with his one-act plays, La Paix du 
menage and Tin Client serieux, gave the impulse to the small 
theaters now so numerous in Paris. 

The Theatre Libre introduced to Parisians the plays of 
Ibsen, 2 Bjornson, Tolstoy, Hauptmann, and Sudermann. Ib- 
sen's craftsmanship was quickly recognized and applauded by 

1 It was in the preceding year, 1896, that M. Antoine undertook to ex- 
ploit the social drama (in which M. Leblond perceived the redemption of 
dramatic literature), producing La Guerre au village, by Trarieux, and other 
plays of this nature. 

2 Peer Gynt was produced at the Theatre de rOEuvre, in 1896, by a 
company under the direction of the actor-manager M. Lugne-Po6, who had 
previously given performances in London of other plays by Ibsen, notably 
Rosmersholm. Le Canard Sauvage (The Wild Duck) was put on at the 
Theatre Libre as early as 1891, but it is only lately that it has been per- 
formed at the Odeon. 

488 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

French playgoers, though his philosophy and mysticism per- 
plex and baffle them. In what measure these currents from 
the north will ultimately affect the stream of French dra- 
matic production no man may say; they have at least exer- 
cised some immediate influence in modifying the native 
inclination to rhetoric and purely theatrical effects. Paris an- 
ticipated London in welcoming Ibsen ; and M. Augustin Filon 
notes with emphasis that, following upon the unfavorable 
attitude of Sarcey and Jules Lemaitre, " John Gabriel 
Borckmann " has been warmly applauded in the Journal des 
Debats by Emile Faguet, and that the Ibsen influence can 
clearly be traced in such dramatists as Paul Hervieu and de 
Curel. M. Filon also perceives in a little group of play- 
wrights of whom Hervieu is the most important, an intellec- 
tual and moral stimulation derived through observation of 
the Theatre Libre experiments. Of this group, Henri Lave- 
dan * has shown proficiency in light comedy ; George de Por- 
to-Riche has revealed in Amoureuse an unsuspected talent; 
Maurice Donnay, 2 in Amants, rather more than in his other 
plays, has displayed originality and charm in the treatment of 
an old theme. Paul Hervieu (born 1857) has established 
himself as one of the foremost living playwrights of France, 
and has written two notable novels — Flirt and L' Armature. 
Les Tenailles (" The Nippers "), a grim and terrible drama 
of marital unhappiness endured for the sake of the wife 's il- 
legitimate child, afforded a hint of Hervieu 's power. A later 
play, Le Dedale (1903), in which the child again dominates 
the theme of domestic misery, revealed a climax bordering 
dangerously on the melodramatic, but was nevertheless filled 
with a sincerity and animated by an art that entitle it to rank 
among the most significant dramatic contributions of recent 
years. Hervieu 's treatment of the problem play differs from 
tnat or Dumas fits, inasmuch as he does not thrust the moral 



1 The first of the Antoine playwrights to win success in the regular 
theaters, his great triumph was Le Duel, performed at the Th£atre-Francais. 
Of his Nouveau Jeu, which gained him admission to the French Academy, 
a Paris critic said that it was "decollete" jusqu' a la ceinture." 

2 La Patronne is the latest of Donnay's plays and La Clairiere the joint 
production of Donnay and Descaves. 

489 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

down your throat, and maintains the attitude of an observer 
rather than a preacher. On the whole, he suggests Becque 
rather than Ibsen. He has not, however, escaped the impu- 
tation of that wordiness which disfigured some of the plays 
by Dumas fits. This appears in Les Paroles Restent, La Loi 
de V Homme, and in that singular puzzle play which has 
least contributed to M. Hervieu's artistic reputation — 
L'Enigme. " In their revolt against the so-called ' well- 
made play,' " remarks Mr. James Huneker, " the newer 
Parisian dramatists have gone to the other extreme." Rene 
Doumic writes: " the theater is becoming the vehicle of 
social predication: every time an author is inspired with 
the muse of Thalia, he finds it necessary to evolve a social 
question: the reform of the family, education, marriage, 
divorce, magistrature, army, finances, penal methods, in- 
telligence offices for nurses, what not. If our society is 
not redeemed it is not for the want of having exposed 
before the footlights a hundred different expedients. . . . 
The object of the stage is not to preach nor to create 
laughter, it is to portray in verity the customs of average 
society. ' ' 

Maurice Maeterlinck, poet, essayist, playwright, was born 
in Belgium (1862), and did not go to live in Paris until 
1886 ; but he is properly classed among French writers. His 
earlier plays — vague, formless, mystic — were written to be 
performed by marionettes ; to minds unreceptive to mysticism 
they remain incomprehensible. His first drama, La Prin- 
cesse Maleine (1889), is a jumble of ideas and words, scarcely 
more coherent than his early volume of poems, Serves 
Chaudes; more than ten years of evolution and dramatic 
symbolism separate it from the lucid and impressive Monna 
Vanna (1902), written for Madame Maeterlinck. 1 It may 
be said of this play— of almost unrivaled popularity in 
Europe, and not unfamiliar to the American public— that 
the chief obstacle to its successful performance in English is 
the difficulty of assembling a company of actors adequate to 
the delivery of its poetry and the interpretation of its heroical- 

1 Madame Georgette Leblanc, the famous actress. The play has lately 
been set to music for an opera by the composer Henry F6vrier. 

490 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

ly wrought characters. Maeterlinck's other plays include 
L'Intruse (1890) ; Pelleas et Melisande (1892), beautiful but 
bizarre in sentiment; Sozur Beatrice (1901) ; and Joyzelle 
(1903), a love story in which the playwright has returned in 
some measure to his earlier manner. Maeterlinck expressly 
eschews action in the plays other than Monna Vanna; 
il theatre statique " (as opposed to the dynamic) is the term 
he himself applies to them. He is ' ' rather a philosopher who 
has turned dramatist than a dramatist who has turned philos- 
opher," says Arthur Symons; he " has made the stage at 
once more subjective and more pictorial than it ever was be- 
fore." A word of digression concerning the essays: Maeter- 
linck has described his philosophy of life and his literary 
theories in his three works Le Tresor des Humbles, La Sag esse 
et la Destinee, and Le Temple enseveli. Theater goers who 
turn away bewildered from the dream plays, readers to whom 
mysticism is meaningless, may nevertheless find enchantment 
in the delightful, perspicuous pages of his greatest produc- 
tion, La vie des abeilles — a " life of the bee " that discloses a 
poet and thinker equipped with the magic of a seductive lit- 
erary style. 

Ten years have passed since M. Faguet, speaking for criti- 
cism, found himself in accord with popular taste in pro- 
nouncing Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), the finest dramatic 
poem in fifty years. Edmond Rostand, its author, born in 
1868, was, because of it, acclaimed a genius, and four years 
later — following L'Aiglon — he was elected a member of the 
French Academy. In ten years, however, enthusiasm cools, 
and of late there has been a disposition to view M. Rostand's 
work more critically, especially as in L'Aiglon (1900) — with 
its interminable recitations and its curious historical perver- 
sities — he did not sustain the expectations aroused by his 
earlier play. Cyrano de Bergerac is not perhaps an epoch- 
making drama. It has not signalized a new movement to 
those who stand anxiously alert for a sign in the dramatic 
heavens; analysis of its ethical value has found it wanting in 
the elements that go to make a great play. Yet its captivating 
qualities are undeniable. It is rife with capricious fancy and 
imagination, and blends pure joy with passages of engaging 
sentiment and telling pathos. Its verse is verse, not the 

491 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

poetry of great poets, but of its kind it is not excelled in 
grace and buoyancy, and it has this especial merit — that it 
is theatrically effective, with none of the monotony peculiar 
to the traditional Alexandrine. Indeed, it is quite possible 
that M. Faguet might reaffirm his first impression. M. Ros- 
tand, who always has been a semi-invalid, produces little. His 
plays antedating his masterpiece embrace Les Romanesques, 
La Princesse Lointaine, and La Samaritaine, and display 
talent, but do not reveal the author of Cyrano save as a poet 
of great facility. 

Probably no play has been so much talked or written 
about before its production as Chanticler. Its long-delayed 
appearance called forth many satirical comments from the 
anti-Rostandites : " Whatever the beauty of the work may 
be," wrote Henri Mairet, "it is impossible that when it is 
known, it will bring nearly so much renown to its author 
as it did while it was unknown. The author therefore has 
every reason to keep it as long as possible in a concealment 
so conducive to its glory." However this may be, Rostand, 
according to the French dramatist de Caillavet, has attained 
in Chanticler lyric effects as good as in the best of his former 
works, and some poetic flights, but no dramatic qualities. The 
subject of the play was suggested by the Fowl Congresses 
popular in the literature of the Middle Ages. The title Chan- 
ticler, is Rostand's adaptation of the old French spelling of 
Chantecler. The play is in four acts with a prologue in verse, 
which is delivered by one of the actors, who steps before the 
curtain and announces that it is a play of animals. The chief 
character is the Cock (Chanticler), who takes the command- 
ing position as herald of the dawn, and even more than that, 
for he impresses his brother fowls to such an extent that they 
believe him to actually command the dawn which appears at 
his summons. 

There is a love motive very delicately managed. In fact, 
the finest quality of the play — on the authority of those who 
have heard passages recited — is the lyrical delicacy of han- 
dling, which has prevented a play of animals from being 
ridiculous. The heroine is, of course, a hen, and in a more 
naive time, the Norman-French " Parliament of Fowls " was 
received with complete seriousness ; but the times have changed, 

492 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

and the incongruity of cocks, hens and dogs speaking mod- 
ern French pentameters is only too easily perceived as an 
element of humor. So far as the reading of the play is 
concerned this incongruity no longer strikes the persons 
most concerned, the actors — for there is no doubt about 
their cordial enthusiasm on the subject of the charm of 
Chanticler. 

It was long evident from certain indications in the plays 
and from private utterances of Rostand that he intended to 
go back farther in the atmosphere of the drama than the 
time of Richelieu. It is surmised by some of his friends that 
he repented of VAiglon as too modern, and as a French 
dramatic writer recently said, the author who could impose 
the impossibility of Cyrano on the audience, and make a 
gallant compose a complicated ballade in the act of the ex- 
quisite feints of an accomplished master of the fence, could 
easily go farther and make lyrical addresses to the sun and 
to all the powers of earth and heaven coming from the mouths 
of fowls, appear probable. 

Chanticler is an appeal to that latent romance and naivete 
in the minds of the most sophisticated, which make the 
dreams of Maeterlinck and Rostand's own Princesse Loin- 
taine agreeable in this over-analytical age. Brunetiere, speak- 
ing of such poetry as Rostand writes, says that his province 
was to take us out of ourselves and into new, unknown, and 
ever-impossible worlds. In Cyrano, while following the form 
of drama in vogue among the Precieuses of the Hotel de 
Rambouillet and reviving their spirit, Rostand captivated 
his analytical Parisian with an impossible world, and in 
Chanticler he revives the atmosphere of the dramatic fable, 
which his ancestors in France, and his ancestors in Norman 
England, looked on as one of the most important forms of 
the play, and threw themselves heartily into its motives and 
atmosphere. The play as read, evidently restores this atmos- 
phere, and forces the hearers to be of it. The question as 
to whether the play-acting can produce so complete an il- 
lusion, cannot be solved until the actors speak their parts 
and attempt to simulate an entirely unreal life under very 
real conditions. 

The passion for playgoing in France has created a health- 

493 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ful appetite for performances out of doors. Theaters in the 
open air have been established by M. Jules Rateau at Peri- 
gueux, and Limoges; in the mountains at Cauterets; and at 
Biarritz, where the tragedy, Phedre, performed in the sum- 
mer of 1907, enjoyed a stage setting of great natural beauty 
at the Theatre de la Mer. M. Albert Darmont has organized 
the Theatre Antique de la Nature at Champigny-la-Bataille, 
and produced the tragedy by Paul Souchon, Le nouveau Dieu. 
Souchon, who has met with some success in the performance 
of Phyllis, in verse, announces his desire to create a modern 
tragedy ; * and Joachim Gasquet, in his prologue to his an- 
tique tragedy, Dionysos, affirms his intention to renew the 
cult of the philosophical and religious drama. 

The Theatre des Poetes, organized by Maurice Magre and 
his followers, and devoted almost exclusively to the romantic 
drama, has not proved an unqualified success; but it has 
served the purpose of introducing to the public certain play- 
wrights of progressive tendencies. The plays produced under 
these auspices include L'Or, by Magre; Imperia, by Jean 
Valmy-Boysse ; La Peur d f aimer, by G. Frejaville; and Louis 
XVII, by G. Frauchois. 

This roster of modern French playwrights is far from 
complete. To make it fairly so one must include the names 
of Frangois Coppee, Jules Claretie, A. Parodi, E. Bergerat, 
P. Deroulede, J. Aicard, G. Ohnet, A. Bisson, 2 Jules Le- 
maitre, J. Jullien, A. Capus, 3 L. Gandillot, G. Feydeau, Mir- 
beau, Rivoire, 4 Bernstein, 5 Bourget, Cury, 6 and others. 
These, with varying degrees of merit, and representing many 

1 A new tragedy, La Furie, by Jules Bois, was lately produced at the 
Theatre-Francais. 

2 The vaudevillist whose latest play, La Femme, is considered a superior 
melodrama. 

3 L'Oiseau blesse, the most recent of Capus's comedies. 
* Le bon Roi Dagobert. 

5 La Rafale, Samson, Le Voleur, and Israel, some of Bernstein's recent 
plays. 

6 The joint production of Bourget and Cury, Le Divorce, a vehicle for 
the expression of four theories — orthodox catholic, free love, liberal 
thought, and toleration — which find eloquent apologists in the various 
characters, caters to all tastes. 

494 



THE MODERN DRAMA 

streams of tendency, are all enrolled in the Quarante ans de 
theatre of the late Francisque Sarcey. The list might easily 
be amplified by enumerating the authors of certain fairy 
plays — including Richepin, Lorrein, Bouchor; the authors of 
the drama injouable— unadapted to the frivolous public taste ; 
together with the playwrights who, in varying degree and 
of various schools, are successfully contributing to the drama 
of the day. But their place at present is a subject for cur- 
rent criticism rather than for the pages of a book. 

Whether or not the drama may be regarded as the high- 
est form of literary expression, it certainly seems to be the 
most difficult, and — in its successful exercise of truly great 
creative gifts — the rarest. The disproportion between the 
dramatic productions of English genius and the contemporary 
development and output in other branches of literature is 
especially noticeable in the nineteenth century, so rich in 
poetry, fiction, and scientific works. This disproportion — in 
an indeterminate degree — exists also in France: the French 
poets and novelists of that century outweigh the contents of 
the dramatic scale. There is nothing, for example, in the 
plays of this period made of such enduring stuff as the tales 
of Balzac and the poetry of Hugo and Musset. Excepting 
transcendent genius — and even transcendent genius is not 
wholly free from the reproach — there seems to be something 
in the practical and contemporary requirements and, we may 
add, the temptations, of the stage, that pales the divine fire, 
clips the wings of inspiration, and cheapens the art of the 
imaginant. Can this be so, or is it merely an inexplicable 
whim of nature which gives us not so often as once in a cen- 
tury, a man who unites technical dramatic proficiency with 
the largest gifts of literary expression? 

It is only within the last fifteen years that the German 
and Scandinavian drama has to some extent affected the pres- 
tige so long enjoyed by the French plays in the theaters of 
Europe and the United States. This has a special significance 
in view of the decline in literary value noted by some of the 
Paris critics, who declare that in this respect the French stage 
is deteriorating. Two expressions invented by the playwrights 
themselves may perhaps be taken as implying their recogni- 
tion of the situation: " Ce n'est pas du theatre " is said of 

495 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

a play possessing literary and dramatic merit, but lacking 
qualities that would make it ■ ' take ' ' with the public ; whereas 
the affirmative, u c'est du theatre " is employed to designate 
a piece obviously destined to success because of its vul- 
gar gayety, questionable moral, and its appeal to the popu- 
lar emotions. Not " will it play? " but rather, " will it 
pay ? ' ' is the uppermost issue of the hour. It is customary to 
blame the public for the degeneracy of the stage, the authors 
being obliged to cater to its taste. " Convenient excuse! " 
exclaims Doumic, ' ' the public has never prescribed any form 
of art, it takes what is given; it is docile and needs to be 
guided. It has that need more than ever for it is growing 
larger. ' ' 

The future of the drama in France is not foreshadowed 
by contemporary productions: no supreme master points the 
way, and no considerable body of dramatists has developed a 
set tendency. Only this we know: that a century has passed 
rich and varied in achievement, without supplying one great 
and enduring addition to the dramatic literature of the 
world. This statement holds true of all other nations with 
the difference that their dramatic output has been smaller and 
poorer than that of the French. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

THE FRENCH PRESS 
THE ORIGIN OF NEWSPAPERS 

When we remember that the Chinese had developed a lit- 
erature at a time when our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, in a bar- 
baric state, were painting their skins blue, it does not seem 
astonishing that the Chinese also had originated the art of 
printing as early as the sixth century of the Christian era, 
and that the Peking Gazette— the oldest daily newspaper in 
the world — dates from about 1340 a.d. This journal, still in 
existence as an official organ, is printed from wooden types, 
just as it was in the fourteenth century, and on one side of the 
paper only, with a colored cover. Strictly speaking, how- 
ever, it affords no real connecting link between modern typog- 
raphy and journalism. The newspaper is the product of 
modern civilization, and was not called into being until long 
after the discovery of the New World had opened un- 
trodden avenues of trade and quickened the activities of 
men. The first newspaper, in the actual sense of the term, 
was the weekly Frankfurter Journal, established by Egenolph 
Emmel in 1615; and the example set by Germany was soon 
followed in England, in 1622, by Nathaniel Butler and his 
associates, in the founding of the Weekly News; while in 
France journalism began with the Gazette (1631). Journal- 
ism did not become a power till much later, when it under- 
took to inform and direct public opinion through the medium 
of the " leading article " or political " editorial/ ' This had 
its beginnings in England early in the eighteenth century, in 
the stirring times of Swift and Defoe ; but France did not in- 
voke its aid till the Revolution of 1789— Germany following 
ten years later. 

The progenitor of the newspaper was the letter of the six- 
33 497 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

teenth century, and it is not without profit to note its in- 
fluence in preparing the way for the Press. It is true that 
the Roman Empire had produced in its bulletins a sort of in- 
cipient journalism. The Acta Diuma, recording the achieve- 
ments of the army ; the Acta Senatus, sl sort of Parliamentary 
report incorporated in the Government Gazette by Julius 
Caesar; and the Acta Publica, which, under the Imperial sanc- 
tion, embraced a variety of statistical, economical and finan- 
cial reports, together with certain matters of public impor- 
tance: these, indeed, savored of a newspaper. We may even 
see a certain analogy between our modern newspaper bulle- 
tins, scanned by the eager crowd, and the huge affairs set up 
by Caesar in public places, about 59 b.c. But the time was 
not ripe for the continuous development of such an idea. 
It must needs wait not only for Gutenberg's discovery of 
metal types, but for the production of paper in sufficient 
quantity and of sufficient cheapness. So not till the Renais- 
sance was the means of communication between persons dis- 
tantly separated accomplished through any better medium 
than the letter. 

After the discovery of America the need of news and 
of means for its dissemination became insistent, particularly 
among men of business. The fashion grew of writing letters 
which were in part of a personal nature and in part a brief 
chronicle of important events occurring within the writer's 
vicinity. The letters had obviously a great value and in- 
terest. " Scraps " or " supplements," " nova " or " avise," 
as they were called in the various countries of their origin 
and transmission, these precious chronicles of war and trade 
were so passed from hand to hand for perusal that it is a 
wonder any of them remain to the antiquarian. 

It came to pass that in Venice — a news center for Europe 
— the Fogli di Avvisi, or news leaflets, took the form of a 
small daily sheet put forth on the Rialto for the price of a 
gazzetta — a small coin equivalent to a little more than a cent 
of our own money. Then leaflet and coin became interchange- 
able terms, and to this day in Italy the newspaper is a " gaz- 
zetta/^ 

1 At a later period, in England, toward the close of the seventeenth 
century, news leaflets made up from the news of the coffee-houses were 

498 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

At Augsburg the Fugger family of merchant princes, 
whose commercial connections kept them in touch with 
travelers and traders everywhere, were constant contributors 
of news letters, some of which are still preserved in the Court 
Library at Vienna. Melanchthon, Luther's collaborator, was 
an indefatigable correspondent at Wittenberg. From his 
letters and from Luther's we learn that when some bit of 
news was of special interest, it was not infrequently printed on 
a loose sheet. Such a letter, bearing the date of 1505, and 
entitled ' ' New Paper, ' ' has been preserved ; but the designa- 
tion is misleading if we seek to connect it with the modern 
newspaper. 

The news letters emanating from Venice, Augsburg, 
Wittenberg, Nuremberg, Brussels, Antwerp, Frankfurt-on- 
the-Main, and Paris, were diversified in contents, and, con- 
sidering their brevity, conveyed a surprising quantity of 
information. These quasi-reporters of the period had the 
" nose for news," and sometimes a taste for the sensational 
not unlike that of our contemporary newspaper makers ad- 
dicted to " Extras " and adjectival debauches. They reveled 
in " bloody rains," murders, monstrosities, and mirages. 
They kept Christendom on edge with reports of the victories 
of the Turks, whose prowess at that time was a constant 
menace to Europe. Letter-writing had, in fact, become a 
trade, and many of the " avise " writers were regularly paid 
for their services. One such reporter in Cologne, who kept 
well informed concerning the Netherlands and France, re- 
ceived an annual salary of two hundred guilders from Rudolf 
II. 

To write such letters was comparatively easy; their dis- 
patch and transmission were attended by many difficulties. 
Princes, dignitaries of the church, the monasteries and the 
towns — all were pressed into service to supplement the efforts 
of the merchants' messengers. Then, in 1425, Fillippo Maria 
Visconti organized at Milan a chain of ducal relay stations. 
Maximilian, with the aid of the Italian, Ian de Sassis, es- 



hawked about the streets; but penny journalism had no sooner showed its 
head than it perished under the imposition of a government tax of a half- 
penny per sheet. 

499 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

tablished a route that in 1491 connected Milan with Inns- 
bruck; and later, under the management of Franz of Taxis, 
Innsbruck was linked with the Netherlands. 

The Taxis family pushed their enterprise. A line of relay 
stations was extended to the French and Spanish courts; the 
system was put in operation throughout Germany. Gradually 
the service ceased to be monopolized for royal purposes. By 
1510 it was available for private uses, and in 1595 Leonard 
of Taxis, was appointed Postmaster General of the Empire 
by Rudolf II. Thereafter, individual efforts to maintain 
delivery routes were abandoned, for the Taxis service had 
come into general use in Germany and throughout much of 
Southwestern Europe. 

FRENCH JOURNALS 

The tumultuous course of events in France during the 
past three centuries has been a decisive factor in shaping 
French journalism. Its evolution has not been as continuous 
as in America and England, and the circumstances attending 
its development, no less than the idiosyncrasies of the French 
character and temperament, have produced a press which, 
measured by Anglo-Saxon ideals and prejudices, has been 
limited in scope and achievement. For one thing, it is the 
nature of the French to manifest a greater interest in persons 
than in conditions and circumstances, and to feel a deeper 
concern in some distinguished author's opinions of a subject 
than in the subject itself. The greater the violence displayed 
by the several exponents of a theory or a cause — culminating, 
perhaps, in* a duel — the greater is the joy derived therefrom 
by the French public. Moreover, journalists in France have 
been compelled by law to sign their productions, thereby 
placing the person of the writer in a position of peculiar 
eminence unattainable in England and America, where all 
political articles appear anonymously. Hence the person of 
the French journalist has enjoyed a significant distinction. 
It is not the journal for which he writes, not L'Autorite, or 
the La Libre Parole, but he himself, Paul de Cassagnac, or 
^douard Drumont, who constitutes a political power; and 
therefore it is not unusual in France for a journalist to be 

500 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

called to political position, which in Germany or in Austria 
would be wholly out of the question. It is coming to be 
recognized, however, that such a state of affairs is against 
public policy. For, as certain critics have pointed out, the 
power of the press in France is exercised directly upon the 
Parliament rather than upon the people, so that it is possible 
under the prevailing system for journalistic adventurers to 
shape the course of Government without reference to real 
public opinion. 

Perhaps the principal distinction between journalism in 
France and that in England and the United States has been 
the indifference of the French to what we call " news," 
which in American eyes, especially, is the first essential req- 
uisite. Until recently the Parisian has been content if his 
chosen journal provided him with political articles, and with 
that species of brilliant gossip, criticism, and comment in 
which the French excel — above all, with the beloved and in- 
evitable feuilleton, or romance, without which no Parisian 
paper could go to press. "What bread and the circus were to 
the Roman populace in the time of the Csesars, so to the bour- 
geois and his betters have been the political outpourings of 
the pamphleteers, and the feuilleton, in its various expressions 
of the journalistic-literary art, from the time of the first 
Napoleon to the period of the Third Republic. But times 
change, and even in France men change with them. Tradi- 
tions are being overturned with the rise of the democracy and 
the infusion of ideas from abroad. The faculties of imagina- 
tion and fancy, so long enthroned in the intellectual temple 
of French life, are giving way before the new and strange 
worship of facts, and the common mind does not stop at 
demanding that telegraphic news from St. Petersburg shall 
actually be prepared at the Russian capital, and not in a 
boulevard cafe. 

So passes the glory of French journalism. For the news 
instinct, once aroused, is insatiable and terrible — growing 
with what it feeds upon. " The news of last week under the 
date of to-morrow " is an old arraignment of the Parisian 
press that may presently seem obsolete enough. Even the 
good old tradition, that a dog fight in Paris is more important 
as news than a battle in America, is dying. The " new 

501 



THE HISTORY OP FRENCH LITERATURE 

journalism, ' ' following the lead of the Echo de Paris, has its 
correspondents at the Continental capitals, as well as in 
London, and the political utterances of the most reckless 
journals are coming to conform in some measure to the 
actualities of the news. Even the Intransigeant is not all 
Rochefort since it has become an evening paper, with tele- 
grams; and that column of fag ends, the Derniere Eeure of 
the morning dailies, is in a fair way to be abolished. 

The real beginning of French journalism is found in La 
Gazette, established in Paris May 30, 1631, by Theophraste 
Renaudot, physician to Louis XIII. It was a periodical news- 
paper written in manuscript, in imitation of the Italian news 
letters, and which Renaudot circulated among his patients. 
The aim of this journal was to espouse the interests of a mon- 
archy hard pressed by the ambitious nobility of the Fronde; 
and Richelieu, if he did not actually inspire the project, at 
least became its patron. The great Cardinal, and, after him, 
Mazarin, lent it their active cooperation; Anne of Austria 
conferred upon its editor the honorary title " Historiographer 
of Her Majesty "; even Louis XIII himself contributed brief 
articles, and — like a child enjoying a new toy — sometimes took 
them in person to the printer and saw them set up in type. 

Renaudot had many enemies to contend with, not alone 
among the French nobility, but among foreign princes as well. 
Nevertheless, La Gazette, consisting of eight pages in small 
quarto, grew from a weekly into a semi-weekly — ultimately 
into a daily. A page was reserved for advertisements, and 
once a month a supplement was issued. Goaded by his ad- 
versaries who sought to curtail the circulation of the journal, 
Renaudot, in a certain issue, published this defiance : ' ' I 
hereby request all foreign princes and states to waste no 
more time in futile attempts to bar my chronicles from their 
territory. For mine is a ware whose sale it has never been 
possible to restrict, and it has this in common with large 
rivers — its strength grows with the barriers it encounters." 

Renaudot prevailed in the end, and, dying in 1653, passed 
on the paper to his sons. In the political storms of ensuing 
years its name was changed more than once, but under the 
title adopted in 1762 — La Gazette de France — it still endures 
to-day, the organ of that dwindling little band of Frenchmen 

502 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

who constitute the survivors of the old Legitimist party. The 
files of the paper, from the first number — more than three 
hundred volumes in all — have fortunately been preserved, 
and are an invaluable record of the times. 

It is necessary to note but briefly some of the early con- 
temporaries of La Gazette. These include Loret's rhymed 
Gazette (1650-65), containing crude but vivid pen pictures 
of the period; Le Mercure Galant (1672), afterwards Le 
Nouveau Mercure, which, still later, as Le Mercure de France, 
attained in 1790 a circulation of 13,000 copies, suspend- 
ing publication in 1792, and thereafter alternately revived 
and suppressed till its final suspension in 1853; Le Journal 
Etr -anger (expired in 1763), numbering among its contrib- 
utors Rousseau, Grimm and Prevost. The first French daily 
was Le Journal de Paris; born with the New Year of 1777, 
it had an innocuous career for half a century, ceasing to 
exist in 1825. 

In 1789 Mirabeau's Courrier de Provence was the fore- 
runner of a veritable rain of newspapers. With the over- 
throw of the old social regime and the " Proclamation con- 
cerning the Freedom of the Press," by the Powers of 1791, 
the highly charged atmosphere spent its thunder showers 
of journals. Marat's most violent Ami du Peuple, together 
with L'Orateur du Peuple, Le Patriote Francais, La Tribune 
du Peuple, Les Revolutions de Paris, were among the countless 
ephemeral newspapers that embraced among their editors 
such leaders as Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Prudhomme. 
It is estimated that some three hundred and fifty journals, 
including seventy-three political publications, were pre- 
cipitated in Paris at this time. Nearly all these newspapers 
had expired by the fall of 1793; one lived till late in the 
nineteenth century; two — Le Moniteur TJniversel, and Le 
Journal des Debats — have survived to our own day. 

With the passing of the Terror the reaction set in. ' ' Let 
the French amuse themselves and dance," said Napoleon, 
" and let alone the plans of Government." We see him 
politely pointing out the frontier to Madame de Stael, and 
ungallantly retorting with an arrow from her own quiver 
when she complained that he had no respect for women: 
" Madame, art is sexless." It is said that Napoleon secretly 

503 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

feared and admired journalists, and even solicited their sup- 
port. Nevertheless, during the Consulate sixty political papers 
were suppressed, and, of those remaining, thirty-nine dis- 
appeared during the Empire, so that in 1811 only four were 
left, not counting La Gazette, Le Journal de Paris, Le Moni- 
teur, and Le Journal des Debats. These four papers were 
under strict censorship, a function officially reintroduced by 
the decree of February 5, 1810, but which had been practi- 
cally in existence for some time before. Thus, at Napoleon's 
instigation, the press was degraded into the merest tool. 
Henceforth, politics were almost completely banished from 
the papers; reports on music, theaters, balls, festivals, con- 
stituted their principal contents. 

After the fall of Napoleon, during the Restoration and 
the July Monarchy, the French press enjoyed a speedy 
renascence. Almost all eminent personages, such as Thiers, 
Mignet, Chateaubriand, Rossi, Tocqueville, took a personal 
interest of some sort or other in journalism, and, in conse- 
quence, a newer and finer note was sounded in the newspapers. 
The most brilliant of these publications, which gloried in the 
display of a subtly academic character, was the Le Journal des 
Debats, founded in August, 1789, by the printer, Baudouin, 
and acquired a year later, for twenty thousand francs, by 
Louis Bertin, a literary man of means and good birth. It 
was a brilliant success from the beginning, and it has ever 
maintained that standard of literary excellence and political 
character and stamina which led Lamartine to say that it had 
' ' made itself part of French history. ' ' Even Napoleon, who 
tolerated rather than approved the Debats, did not work it 
serious injury when, finding the title " inconvenient, ' ' he 
caused it to be altered to Le Journal de V Empire (the old 
name was resumed in 1815), or again, when, under the threat 
of a special censorship, he informed Fievee, one of its editors, 
that the only safe course was " to avoid the publication of 
any news unfavorable to the Government, until the truth of 
it is so well established that the publication became needless. ' ' 
Later, with Sylvestre de Sacy as editor, a journalist whose 
exquisite diction was united with a dignity and reserve un- 
impaired in the most trying circumstances, the Debats was 
purged of all petty feuds and rivalries, and rose to a power 

504 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

that did not wane until the days of the Third Republic. Then 
came a political disruption of owners and readers, just as in 
1815 a similar disagreement had led to the founding of Le 
Const it utionnel. Those who remained at the helm sought to 
regain the prestige enjoyed under Louis-Philippe by a re- 
course to popular methods. The policy of the paper was 
changed to the sensational, the price reduced, and an evening 
edition was brought out on pink paper. But these methods 
only succeeded in horrifying the old clientele without alluring 
a new one. To-day the Debats, conservative Republican, of 
moderate circulation, sells for three cents to all who still 
enjoy a journal that adheres to the most delightful traditions 
of the French press. It is the newspaper in which Jules 
Janin brought the feuilleton to the highest pitch of perfec- 
tion; in which Chateaubriand addressed " Unhappy France " 
and the Malheureux Boi; whose contributors have included 
Guizot and Heine, Renan, and Taine; in which the Baron 
Jacques de Reinach conducted a financial page of supreme 
integrity and authority — and, for the first time, a page in- 
telligible to the public. It is the newspaper which, above all 
others, enrolled among its writers the mental aristocracy of 
France, so that de Sacy could say to the youthful Renan, 
" Believe me, whoever has once written for the Debats cannot 
remain away; it would be a misfortune for him." 

Cheap journalism in France goes back to 1836, when 
Emile de Girardin founded La Presse, reducing the customary 
annual subscription price of eighty francs to half that sum. 
Le Steele followed suit, and ten years later had become the 
most popular paper of the French lower middle classes, with 
a circulation of more than forty thousand; in the Paris of 
to-day it has lost its importance. The Presse, also, which in 
its early days was noted for its vivacity and brightness, and 
included Balzac, Gautier, Hugo, and Sophie Gay (Madame 
de Girardin, author of La Joie Fait Peur) among its con- 
tributors, has been overtaken by mediocrity. Within recent 
years it was conspicuous in Paris as an example of French 
" yellow " journalism; it is even said that our most flagrant 
American journal of this class borrowed its headlines from 
France — a damning indictment we are unable to confirm. 
The Presse, however, is doing penance for its sins, as it has 

505 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

lately been absorbed in the Roman Catholic newspaper syn- 
dicate conducted by M. Vrau in conjunction with La Croix. 

The immense early popularity of La Presse and Le Siecle 
was attained in part through the publication in their feuil- 
letons of novels by Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue and other 
distinguished authors. At the same time Le Constitutionnel, 
established early in the Restoration period, was revived under 
the direction of Dr. Veron, who paid Eugene Sue one hundred 
thousand francs x for Le Juif Errant, reduced the price of the 
paper, and engaged Sainte-Beuve as literary critic. It is 
worthy of note that this amazing literary enterprise of three 
French journals, at a time when the aggregate of subscribers 
in Paris was but 70,000, was not imitated till late in the nine- 
teenth century; and then not by individual newspapers, but 
by a syndicate of American journals which published novels of 
minor importance. 

La Patrie appeared in 1842 — a paper originally designed 
for the lesser bourgeoisie, and degenerating into a Chauvin- 
istic agitator. The poet, Francois Coppee, and the Comtesse 
de Martel (Gyp), have helped to make it conspicuous. 
Le National, a journal founded in 1830 and now forgotten, 
was a great political power in its day, and helped to over- 
throw first the government of Charles X and afterwards the 
rule of Louis-Philippe. The revolution of February, 1848, 
like the first revolution, produced a great crop of new papers, 
some of them with names similar to those used in the '90s. 
In 1848 no less than four hundred and fifty new journals 
appeared, and in 1849 two hundred more were started; 
but an ordinance of the Second Empire, passed February 
17, 1852, disposed of most of these petty brawlers, and abro- 
gated the freedom of the press which the Second Republic 
had reinstated. In 1853 the number of Parisian daily papers 
had fallen to fourteen. Chief among these were: Les De- 
bats, Le Siecle, La Presse, Le Pays, La Patrie, Le Constitu- 
tionnel, L'TJnivers, La Gazette de France, Le Charivari, L'As- 
semblee Nationale, L 'Union. The identical conditions exist- 
ing under Napoleon I were developed under Napoleon III, 
whose coup d'etat killed Le National and other liberal or- 

1 Scribe received six thousand francs for his novel Piquillo Aliaga. 

506 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

gans. Freedom of speech was practically inhibited, and po- 
litical views could be aired only when properly toned down 
and doctored. The subscription list of Les Debats fell from 
12,000 to 9,000 ; that of La Presse from 25,000 to 15,000. The 
papers endeavored heroically to cover the paucity of political 
material by amusing feuilletons. The performances at the 
theaters, actors and actresses, the belles of the public balls, 
scandals of high life, were dissected in the airiest way, and 
with a circumstantiality and sense of importance that would 
have befitted affairs of state. Raconteurs like Jules Janin and 
Alphonse Karr developed a virtuosity as splendid as it was 
striking, in the recounting of this small talk. 

The relative circulation of the six principal newspapers 
in Paris in 1858 was in this order : Le Siecle, La Presse, Le 
Constitutionnel, La Patrie, Les Debats, L'Assemblee Natio- 
nale. The number of journals, so greatly diminished in 1853, 
was again augmented in the '60s, owing to the pecuniary suc- 
cess of Girardin's commercialism, which lowered the tone of 
the press, just as sensational methods have affected our own 
American press to-day. The most admirable papers of the 
traditional style made the least money. The times were ripe 
for Le Figaro (1854), and for Rochefort's Lanterne (the 
weekly pamphlet, 1868; the daily paper, 1877), which marked 
the return to power of the political press. The few other im- 
portant papers established during the eighteen years of the 
Second Empire were Le Temps (first founded in 1829 — dis- 
continued 1842 — reappeared 1861), La France (1862), Le 
Petit Journal (1863), Le Gaulois (1866). During the closing 
days of the third Napoleon's reign the press received a new 
impetus, and many political papers of more or less vitality, 
such as Le Rappel, La Marseillaise, and Le Journal de Paris, 
appeared. The revolution of September, 1870, also called 
forth its quota of new journals, as in 1848, and the insurrec- 
tion of the Commune similarly evoked a journalistic ephemera 
that flourished for a day and passed from view. 

A curious phenomenon of French journalism is the one- 
man paper, which owes its amazing influence and popularity 
to the truculence of its editor, and his capacity for amusing 
and original abuse. Its foremost exponent is Victor Henri, 
Marquis de Rochefort-Lugay, commonly known as Henri 

507 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

Rochefort, born in 1830, and who, after more than forty 
years of extravagant denunciation and political somersault- 
ing, has not quite exhausted his vocabulary of invective or 
his capacity for inconsistency. Aristocrat by birth, idol of 
the cabman and the waiter, a professional opponent of the 
Government, assailant, by turns, of the Emperor and the 
army, the church, and the Jew, a duelist of renown, a po- 
litical exile to whom prison and transportation have been the 
alternate episodes of a triumphant career — Henri Rochefort 
has thrived on excitement. We can conceive of no one to 
whom the newspaper " Interviewer " might put with more 
relish, if with questionable profit, the perennial question, 
* ' To what, venerable sir, do you attribute your longevity ? ' ' 
The records of serene senility will not be complete without 
it. Henri Rochefort has not perhaps greatly enriched the 
dictionary of the Academy, but American and British visi- 
tors in the French capital insist that the cabman has found 
in him a constant source of comfort and inspiration. To 
attempt more than the briefest recountal of his tempestuous 
career would make his place in these pages seem dispropor- 
tionate. His peculiar genius first illuminated the pages of 
Le Charivari. In the '60s we see him as ' ' chroniqueur " to Le 
Figaro, expanding with a verbal intemperance which pres- 
ently caused the conversion of that paper from a sheet for 
the delectation of the " boulevardier " to an avowed political 
journal. He received at that time an annual salary of thirty 
thousand francs. Many years later, in 1896, it transpired in 
court proceedings that Rochefort of L'Intransigeant had, since 
1889, drawn as editor and shareholder, a sum equivalent to 
three hundred and forty-two thousand francs a year. A 
tyrannical government has at various times suppressed the 
property and sequestered the person of this blue-blooded ami 
du peuple, though without permanent effect. It was to save 
Le Figaro from seizure that he left its service in 1865 and 
started La Lanteme, printed on pink paper, which was other 
than a symbol of propriety. Its first nine weekly issues 
reached a circulation of more than 1,150,000 copies, when 
the Government forbade its further publication in Paris, and 
M. Rochefort took it with him to Brussels. It now flourishes 
in Paris as a rabid organ of the anti-clericals. On his return to 

508 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

Paris in 1880, after one of his temporary eclipses— it was New 
Caledonia, London, and Geneva this time— M. Rochefort took 
charge of the radical Intransigeant, which, with some inter- 
ruptions, including the Boulanger episode of exile, he con- 
tinues to direct. Some critics have compared M. Rochefort to 
Mirabeau ; others content themselves with an expletive or two 
from his own thesaurus. 

We have approached that period, already alluded to, in 
which we observe the radical transformation of the French 
press from a literary supplement or feuilleton, plus the news 
and a broadside of opinion, to a newspaper in which the news 
threatens to predominate. It does not seem likely that the 
literary character of French journalism at its best shall be 
really lost. It is even reasonable to suppose that from the ad- 
justment of new and old conditions there may arise an ideal 
press combining accuracy and freshness of information with 
the sprightliness, fancy, and grace of presentation with 
which the Parisian writer so happily clothes the most trivial 
of occurrences. Dullness is not in the blood of the French- 
man. If at times life is not gay, why then it becomes to him 
too serious to be taken seriously. One thing seems sure: if 
the journal d 'informations kills the journal of the feuilleton, 
it must first kill the Parisian's wit and taste, and inherent 
gayety of disposition. A Frenchman who does not want to 
be amused is almost as inconceivable as a Frenchman who 
would find amusement in the banalites of our " yellow " 
journalism, or in the dullness of its more respected contem- 
poraries. 

The causes that have brought about the radical changes 
in the French press within the last few years are open to 
speculation. Some observers ascribe them to the less leisurely 
ways of life in the French capital, as expressed especially in 
rapid transit. A significant factor, too, is the growth of re- 
publican ideas, which in removing restrictions from the press, 
have left it free to extend its functions as a purveyor of news 
and opinions. The feuilleton, it is recalled, was a device of 
Bertin, owner of the Debats, and he was inspired to employ 
it, in 1800, because under the despotic rule of Napoleon, it 
was not possible to publish a newspaper otherwise than in- 
nocuous, or, in other words, devoid of information and opin- 

509 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

ion. The tradition of the feuilleton has held, and recurring 
periods of restriction have continued to impose it somewhat 
disproportionately upon a public awakening more and more 
to the means for the diffusion of news. As yet, journalistic 
polemics — a euphemism when applied to the one-man jour- 
nals — have precedence; but, as it is not possible always and 
ever to defy facts, the publication of the news is beginning 
to exercise a wholesome influence on those editors who have 
heretofore found it convenient to ignore them. 

"When we come to catalogue the contemporary newspapers 
of Paris, the task at first sight seems appalling. The period 
has not yet passed in France when one can found a newspaper 
with no more substantial capital than an original talent for 
vituperation and printer's ink enough for your limited 
edition. In the United States the projection of a newspaper 
in any considerable city is an undertaking of pecuniary con- 
sequence. It must, in the first place, print the news ; and this, 
provided the thing can be done at all, with the assistance of 
an Associated Press franchise — involves a large outlay. But 
in Paris a journal may be the impulsive creation of a poli- 
tician with a grievance, of a free lance who has found a pa- 
tron, or a pamphleteer who finds it profitable to espouse a 
cause or to denounce an idea. The so-called news service of 
the ' * Agence Havas ' ' is easily and cheaply procured ; two or 
three reporters constitute the staff. For the rest, it is the 
editor's own personality that counts; and the journal is born, 
and sometimes achieves a circulation, with little travail. Thus, 
in the Paris of recent years, as in certain former periods we 
have noted, the ephemeral fraction of the press may be lik- 
ened, in its multiplicity, to a swarm of flies. Newspapers ap- 
pear and disappear, change their political opinions, pass from 
one owner to another, from morning to evening editions, with 
a rapidity that is mystifying to the Anglo-Saxon looker on. 
Moreover, the Paris press is in a state of transition, and of 
such quick transition that five years of its record becomes 
a cycle in significance. 

No less than 2,400 newspapers were published in France 
in 1900, of which 240 appeared in Paris, including 146 dailies 
of all descriptions. In 1903 the number of the Parisian polit- 
ical daily organs is placed by one authority at sixty, in round 

510 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

numbers. In circulation these journals vary from the 500 
lithographed sheets (distributed to as many newspapers 
throughout France) of La Correspondance Nationale et 
Nouvelles — official organ of the Due d 'Orleans — to Le Petit 
Journal, variously credited with a daily issue of from 
1,000,000 to 1,250,000 copies. This paper of the populace, 
founded by Millaud in 1863, was the precursor of the penny 
press. Millaud had the knack of providing the sort of cheap 
and entertaining reading relished by the concierge and the 
ouvrier. Not only in Paris, but in all the little towns of 
France, it was especially made welcome in the homes of the 
humble. If its business agents were Americans, they would 
say it had become a " household word." It does not meddle 
much in politics, preferring the safe course of offending no 
one. Yet, it is not without great political influence, with the 
strength of such a constituency behind it. The control of Le 
Petit Journal passed long ago from Millaud to Marinoni, in- 
ventor of the rotary printing press, and finally to Senator 
Privet, a Nationalist. On one of the few occasions when it 
took a political stand, and opposed the cause of Dreyfus, it 
suffered in popularity. Senator Jean Dupuy, former Minis- 
ter of Agriculture and principal owner of Le Petit Parisien, 
perceived his opportunity, and his paper, which had relied 
on the patronage of the cabman and market gardener, was 
enlarged to six pages and soon became a formidable rival of 
Le Petit Journal, reaching a circulation of 700,000 copies a 
day at the beginning of this century. 

But Le Matin, dating from 1884, and devoting more at- 
tention to news than to politics, is the paper most significant 
of the new journalism in France. It rose from the ruins of 
The Morning News, 1 the unsuccessful venture of the Ameri- 

1 When James Gordon Bennett founded the Paris Herald it gave the coup 
de grace to The Morning News and Galignani's Messenger. No less a person 
than Thackeray was once a subeditor on Galignani's Messenger. He refers 
to it in a letter to Mrs. Brookfield, in 1848, in which he speaks of an 
old acquaintance, a Mr. Longueville Jones, as "an excellent, worthy, ac- 
complished fellow. . . . We worked on Galignani's Messenger for ten 
francs a day very cheerfully, ten years ago." It was in those days that 
Thackeray gathered his notes for his Paris Sketch Book and the Ballad of 
Bouillabaisse. 

511 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

can dentist, Dr. Thomas Evans, 1 and was viewed as a trans- 
Atlantic enterprise. Regarded as the competitor of the 
Paris edition of the New York Herald, and by some per- 
sons identified with its ownership, Le Matin was until recently 
looked upon as a somewhat nondescript publication. To-day 
it takes the lead in the printing of foreign news, and is en- 
gaged in the promotion of such adventures as the Pekin-Paris 
automobile race. It has likewise enlisted the services of many 
distinguished contributors on current topics, and, with M. 
Hugues Leroux, took a leading part in the campaign for the 
correction of certain misconceptions supposed to be enter- 
tained in England and the United States respecting the char- 
acter of French literature. Le Matin is owned by a company 
under the control of M. Bunau-Varilla, brother of the distin- 
guished engineer, and is edited by M. Stephane Lauzanne, 
nephew of the late M. de Blowitz. A rival and imitator of 
Le Matin is the anti-Anglo-Saxon L' Eclair. It has also a 
competitor, both in news and circulation, in Le Journal, 
which is one of the important moderate Republican morning 
dailies ; it reached an enviable standard of literary excellence 
under the editorship of the late Ferdinand Xau, and in ex- 
ploiting the news it has not suffered a decline in ideals. Its 
present owner is a rich Government contractor, M. Letellier. 
L'Echo de Paris, an organ of Nationalism, and originally a 
competitor of Le Gil Bias, has enrolled itself among the jour- 
naux d 'informations, and is credited with an excellent for- 
eign news service. 

It is scarcely possible to recount in a paragraph the sin- 
gular vicissitudes and varied characteristics of that chame- 
leon of Parisian journalism, Le Figaro. A gay cynicism and 
a buoyant determination to keep its columns free from the 
hampering shackles of principles and views have marked its 
erratic and entertaining career. " The policy of the paper " 
— vague and formidable phrase — is assumed to represent, 
more or less concretely, the form and direction of the moral 
and political vehicle we call journalism, as impelled by cer- 

1 It was Dr. Evans who, after the fall of the Second Empire, helped the 
Empress Eugenie to reach Sir John Burgoyne's yacht, in order that she 
might take refuge in England. 

512 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

tain individuals of avowed responsibility. But to have no 
policy at all, and not to deny it, is vastly more convenient, 
and, not infrequently, less hypocritical. When we say that 
Le Figaro has been thus unrestricted, a good deal is ex- 
plained. When we add that its primary function has been 
to amuse and to shock, and that no one takes it over- 
seriously, its influence can be better estimated and under- 
stood. It is, of all Parisian journals, the best known to the 
foreigner; and it appears to the Briton and the American 
(who, as a rule, know only that side of it), to be typical of 
the French temperament. 

De Villemessant, a semi-illiterate adventurer and journal- 
istic genius, who refounded Le Figaro in 1854, and turned it 
into a daily twelve years later, had the courage of his lack 
of convictions. He understood the weaknesses of human na- 
ture, and the foibles of his countrymen ; and he played upon 
them adroitly. The world to him was a fancy-dress ball, and 
he, the master of ceremonies, wore the most ingenious cos- 
tume. . In the early 70s we see him, as it were, two persons at 
once — half his head shaved into the likeness of a monk, the 
other half of it painted to resemble Harlequin. A Legitimist 
praying for the restoration of " le roi," he intoned a chant 
that brought him the patronage of the pious ; a Merry Andrew, 
with suggestive wink, the ultraworldly thrived on the enter- 
tainment he provided them. It is said that when Louis Veu- 
illot proclaimed his Univers as the greatest organ of Catho- 
licity, de Villemessant flourished his subscription list, with the 
offer to wager that it, and not Veuillot's, contained the greater 
number of clerical names. And the bet was not taken up. 
De Villemessant undoubtedly made his paper readable. To 
this end he secured the services of the most brilliant writers 
of the moment, dropping them quickly when they had served 
his turn. He exploited the imitators of Eugene Guinot (who 
had revived the Chronique system) ; Jules Janin, Karr, About, 
Fouquier, and Albert Wolff — a German who wrote admirably 
in French, and a celebrated chronicler of Le Figaro. On the 
theory " tout homme a un article dans le ventre " (every 
man knows something he can write about) , he one day pressed 
a chimney-sweep into his service, and somehow extracted from 
him an article that aroused the curiosity of Paris. He was 
34 513 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

all things to all men, and nothing long by turns. His suc- 
cessor, Francis Magnard, upheld the traditions ably; and' 
the foremost journal of the boulevards shone with even a 
brighter luster. In his personal contributions to the paper 
he brought to perfection, says one critic, " the art of jumping 
with the cat." Also he procured the assistance of the ablest 
writers of the day, including Jules Simon, and in other ways 
maintained the journal's popularity. It is only in recent years 
that this popularity has suffered. One cannot always " jump 
with the cat." In the days of the bitter Dreyfus controversy, 
the new editors of Le Figaro, with de Rodays as the chief, at- 
tempted the still more difficult feat of holding with the hare 
and running with the hounds. In their brief championship 
of Zola and Dreyfus they erred in their observation of the 
public's attitude, and though a quick change of front was ef- 
fected, Le Figaro's circulation was diminished. To-day it is 
under the control of Gaston Calmette, and is reported to be 
recovering its ground. Le Figaro has not lost its animation 
of tone. Perhaps like its progenitor, the hero of Beaumar- 
chais, if it ever becomes wholly virtuous it will also be dull. 
Lacking the " esprit gaulois " of Le Figaro, and yet re- 
garded in a measure as a rival, is that boulevard journal, Le 
Gaulois, born to the Royalist purple in 1866, with Henri de 
Pene as sponsor, and — under Arthur Mayer, its editor to-day 
— a doughty champion of the Church and the Due d 'Orleans. 
M. Mayer is something of an anomaly. A Jew himself, his 
journal is anti-Semitic. Snubbed by the Pretender to the 
throne, he defends him and proclaims his cause none the less 
zealously. A rich man, he has not lost his enthusiasm or his 
relish for work. Le Gaulois is the favorite paper of the Fau- 
oourg St. Germain, and this is some compensation to M. 
Mayer for the duke's eccentric behavior in advocating an 
alliance with perfidious Albion. Another imperialistic paper 
is L'Autorite, of Paul de Cassagnac, duelist and pamphleteer. 
He, too, is against the Government and the Jew ; but a milder 
and saner type than the more optimistic Mayer. With a sen- 
timental regard for the setting sun of monarchy is Le Soleil, 
spokesman of the Orleanists, a journal which shone resplen- 
dent under the direction of the late Edouard Herve, a mem- 
ber of the French Academy. With Jules Lemaitre and Fran- 

514 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

cois Coppee on its staff, its literary flavor was not lost after 
the death of its editor; but it, too, suffered in the Dreyfus 
affair, and is on the decline. 

What shall we say of Drumont, whose daily battle cry in 
La Libre Parole is " down with the Jew and the Briton! "? 
His paper would be quite impossible in this country; for, 
quite aside from our ideas of tolerance, an anti- Jewish jour- 
nal would not enjoy much advertising patronage. But in 
France, where journals are supported by subsidies, and where 
" la reclame," or the paid " puff," has been fostered in a 
way quite foreign to American notions of propriety, it is 
possible to make such a newspaper pay. La Libre Parole, 
which fomented the Dreyfus affair, is prosperous, and wields 
great political influence. Drumont, whose published photo- 
graphs suggest the bomb-throwing anarchist, is a man of 
scholarly attainments. But his learning and style are nullified 
by reckless mendacity and venom of utterance. Yet such is 
the feeling against the Jew in France — stimulated, perhaps, 
by Drumont 's extravagant book, La France Juive — that the 
clergy has been conspicuous in the list of his subscribers. 

Some mention must be made of L'Humanite, the organ of 
the Socialist leader, Jaures, whose unquenchable oratory is 
thereby spread far and wide; La Bepublique Frangaise, in 
which the torch of Gambetta is borne on by Joseph Reinach ; 
L'Aurore, 1 of which Georges Clemenceau was a former editor; 
the anti-clerical Le Radical, and Le Rappel; Le Gil Bias, 2 a 
naughty paper somewhat diminished in consequence; La 
Libert e, a Republican paper with a leaning to the news, and 
Le XlXeme Siecle, founded by Edmond About. The cata- 
logue degenerates into a gazetteer. 

The solid, substantial, and most important newspaper in 

1 It was VAurore that, in 1898, published lilmile Zola's famous letter, 
J'accuse, in which he attacked the officers of the Dreyfus court- 
martial, and for which both Zola and the Aurore's editor, M. Perreux, 
were fined and imprisoned. 

2 Le Gil Bias made its appearance as a literary weekly, a quarter of a 
century ago, with Gambetta as a backer, and became so successful that its 
daring purchasers converted it into a daily devoted wholly to literature. 
Maupassant, Zola, Mendes, and Anatole France were among its contribu- 
tors. Then it took a hand in politics, but that has not enlarged its 
reputation. 

515 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

France is, of course, Le Temps, which, like Les Debats, is pub- 
lished in the afternoon. It is able, it is heavy, it is dignified 
— it has, in short, many of the characteristics of its London 
namesake, including the tendency to publish parliamentary 
addresses and other sober orations in full. No one who wishes 
to read a verbatim report of the maiden address of a new Im- 
mortal will begrudge it its price of three cents. It prints 
the semi-official Government announcements, and upholds the 
dignity of the nation. It is nothing, if not intellectual — it 
has been the medium of Sainte-Beuve and of Sarcey ; and it is 
ever informing and accurate, and only those persons who in- 
sist upon being entertained as well as instructed — and who 
may be dismissed with the frivolous majority in France — find 
it dull. Le Temps is mildly anti-clerical, and is the only 
French paper of consequence that is Protestant in policy. It 
was established by Alsatian Protestants, in 1861, at a time 
when Napoleon III had come to feel that a modification of the 
rigid press censorship would be judicious. Its editor, A. Nefft- 
zer, with several associates, made its influence felt at once ; but 
the loss of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War de- 
moralized the patriotic staff. Nefftzer dropped his pen and 
died, and in 1871 the journal, greatly impaired in prestige 
and fortune, was bought for a small sum by a company formed 
by Adrien Hebrard. His capacity as a manager, united with 
a breadth of view and a thorough knowledge of world politics 
that his service in the Senate has enriched, have made it pos- 
sible for him to put Le Temps on the eminence it occupies 
to-day. 

The religious press is an important factor in France. La 
Croix, the organ of the Roman Catholic clergy, has its head- 
quarters in Paris, and nearly two hundred local editions in 
as many provincial towns. Its circulation is rivaled only by 
that of the Le Petit Journal, and its influence is, of course, 
considerable. Obviously, it is anti-Republican ; at the time of 
the disaffection of the South in the early summer of 1907, 
the enemies of La Croix in the Chamber of Deputies charged 
it with sowing the seeds of dissension by evoking visions of a 
happier France under kingly rule. 

L'Univers, moderate and dignified in tone, became famous 
through its great editor, the late Louis Veuillot. Guarding 

516 



THE FRENCH PRESS 

the interests of the Catholics, and espousing the Orleanist 
cause, it makes a secular appeal in its columns devoted to 
literature and the drama, and even to the horse-races, and is, 
on the whole, political rather than religious. 

The provinces no longer look wholly to Paris for news 
and views, and the provincial press has made great strides 
since 1880. La Depeche, of Toulouse prints twelve daily 
editions, and circulates through a large area. Two other Re- 
publican dailies are Le Nouvelliste de Lyon and Le Petit Mar- 
seillais. These, with other provincial papers, have their rep- 
resentatives in Paris, and receive news reports by wire. 

FRENCH PERIODICALS 

The unillustrated French magazines and reviews, at their 
best, represent a higher order of merit than the contemporary 
French Press, and are not excelled by those of any country. 
Periodical literature originated in France, and the magazines 
of other European nations have followed French models. 
The great Journal des Savants, first issued on January 5, 
1665, by Denis de Sallo, scholar and nobleman, under the 
nominal editorship of his secretary, d'Hedouville, and con- 
tinued by the Abbe Jean Gallois and others, soon became the 
mouthpiece of letters and science. It made all knowledge 
its own. History, mechanics, medicine, the natural sciences, 
poetry — there was nothing in the domain of the intellect that 
it did not seek to exploit. Curiously enough, its constituency 
took exception to poetry, as beneath the serious considera- 
tion of a scientific journal. The intellectual aristocracy of 
France were its supporters, and — suppressed and revived at 
intervals — it remained the foremost exponent of contem- 
porary life and thought until the appearance of La Revue 
des Deux-Mondes. This magazine is now the best publication 
of its kind in France — perhaps the best in the world as a 
purveyor of pure literature and criticism. Started in 1831 
by Francois Buloz, it soon became the forum of literary and 
scientific France. Buloz (1804—77), was a shepherd in his 
youth, and was educated by a patron who took a fancy to 
him. On coming to Paris he worked as a compositor, and 
saved enough money to buy the moribund Revue. A born 

517 



THE HISTORY OF FRENCH LITERATURE 

editor, he possessed in a remarkable degree all the qualifica- 
tions for managing an enterprise of this description. He was 
painstaking, far-sighted, and endowed with a singularly keen 
scent for matters of current interest, for everything that was 
" actuel." It was Buloz, who, when a philosopher handed 
him a treatise on the nature and substance of the Godhead, 
rejected it with the remark, " Dieu n'est pas actuel." He 
did not, however, like some of our American editors, fall a 
victim to " timeliness " by trespassing on the functions of 
journalism. The literary integrity of the great journal was 
kept intact. In 1833 La Revue des Deux-Mondes began the 
publication of political articles, and from that time on it be- 
came a perfect mirror of the times. All men of literary con- 
sequence — Alfred de Musset, Mignet, Guizot, Villemain, de 
Yigny, Augustin Thierry, de Remusat, Sainte-Beuve, Jules 
Sandeau, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, Octave 
Feuillet, Taine, Renan, Havet — contributed to it, and all of 
them subordinated themselves to the despotic will of Buloz, 
who used his blue pencil without mercy whenever the interests 
of his paper so demanded. In 1845 La Revue was reorganized 
and converted into a stock company, and the undertaking now 
represents an annual net earning capacity of five hundred 
thousand francs. Upon the death of Buloz, his son assumed 
the management, and retained it until 1893, when the dis- 
tinguished litterateur, Ferdinand Brunetiere (born 1849 at 
Toulon, recently deceased), became the editor. For a time, 
Madame Adam's La Nouvelle Revue and La Revue Politique 
et Litteraire endeavored to outstrip La Revue des Deux- 
Mondes, but without success. 

The growth of the illustrated French magazines is unim- 
portant. L 'Illustration, Le Monde Illustre, Le Magasin Pit- 
toresque, etc., are excellent of their kind. The humorous 
publications, Le Charivari (1832), Le Petit Journal pour 
Rire, Le Journal Amusant, etc., although they possess the 
distinguishing French characteristic of spontaneous grace 
and recklessness, do not rise to the level one might expect in 
a nation of such lively imagination and delicate art. Often, 
indeed, these publications seem not only pointless to the 
Americans, but shockingly vulgar as well. A satirical jour- 
nal worthy of the French literary genius is yet to be born. 

518 



APPENDIX 



THE FORTY IMMORTALS OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY 





Year 
Elected. 


Name. 


1 


1870 


Smile Ollivier. 


2 


1874 


Alfred Jean Francois Mezieres. 


3 


1886 


Comte d'Haussonville (Othenin P. de Cleron). 


4 


1888 


Jules Arnaud Arsene Claretie. 


5 


1888 


Vicomte de Vogue (Eugene Marie Melchior). 


6 


1890 


Charles Louis de Saulses de Freycinet. 


7 


1891 


Louis Marie Julien Viaud (Pierre Loti). 


8 


1892 


Ernest Lavisse. 


9 


1893 


Paul Louis Thureau-Dangin. 


10 


1894 


Paul Bourget. 


11 


1894 


Henri Houssaye. 


12 


1895 


Jules Lemaitre. 


13 


1896 


Jacques Anatole Thibault (Anatole France). 


14 


1896 


Marquis de Beauregard (Marie C. A, Costa). 


15 


1896 


Comte Vandal (Louis Jules Albert). 


16 


1897 


Comte de Mun (Albert). 


17 


1897 


Gabriel Hanotaux. 


18 


1899 


Henri Leon Emile Lavedan. 


19 


1899 


Paul Deschanel. 


20 


1900 


Paul Hervieu. 


21 


1900 


Auguste fimile Faguet. 


22 


1901 


Marquis de Vogue (Charles Jean Melchior). 


23 


1901 


Edmond Rostand. 


24 


1903 


Frederic Masson. 


25 


1903 


Rene Bazin. 


26 


1905 


fitienne Lamy. 


27 


1906 


Alexandre Felix Joseph Ribot. 


28 


1906 


Maurice Barres. 


29 


1906 


Cardinal Mathieu (Francois Desire). 


30 


1907 


Marquis de Segur. 


31 


1907 


Maurice Donnay. 



519 



APPENDIX 





Year 
Elected. 


Name. 


32 


1907 


Maitre Andre Barboux. 


33 


1908 


Francis Charmes. 


34 


1908 


Jean Richepin. 


35 


1908 


Henri Poincare\ 


36 


1909 


Raymond Poincare. 


37 


1909 


Eugene Brieux. 


38 


1909 


Jean Aicard. 


39 


1909 


Rene Douraic. 


40 


1909 


Marcel Prevost. 



RULERS OF FRANCE 



Merovingian Dynasty 
481-751 (Teutonic Rulers) 

Clovis (First Christian King) 

Division of Gaul into several kingdoms. Mayors of 
palace (chiefs of the leudes or nobles) becoming actual 
rulers and reducing the kings to "do-naughts" (rois 
faineants) 



481-511 



511-751 



II 

Carolingian Dynasty 

751-987 

Pepin the Short (Le Bref) 751-768 

Charles I, the Great (Charlemagne) 768-814 

Louis I, the Pious (Le Pieux or Le Debonnaire) . . 814-840 

Division of kingdom by three sons of Louis I. . . 840-843 

Charles II, the Bald (Le Chauve) 843-877 

Louis II, the Stammerer (Le Begue) 877-879 

Louis III, and his brother Carloman 879-884 

Charles the Fat (Le Gros) 884-887 

Eudes, or Odo, Count of Paris 887-898 

Charles III, the Simple (Le Simple or le Sot) , . . 898-923 
(Robert I, the "Fame-bright," was chosen king of 
France in opposition to Charles the Simple in 922) 

Raoul of Burgundy 923-936 

520 



APPENDIX 

Louis IV, from beyond the Seas (D'Outre-Mer) . . . 936-954 

Lothair . 954-986 

Louis V, the Sluggard (Le Faineant) .... 986-987 

III 

Capetian Dynasty 

987-1328 

Hugh Capet 987- 996 

Robert II, the Pious (Le Pieux) -. . 996-1031 

Henry I 1031-1060 

Philip I 1060-1108 

Louis VI, the Fat (Le Gros) 1108-1137 

Louis VII, the Young (Louis-Flores or Le Jeung) . . 1137-1180 

Philip II, Augustus 1180-1223 

Louis VIII, the Lion (Le Lion) 1223-1226 

Louis IX, Saint Louis (Canonized 1279) .... 1226-1270 

Philip III, the Bold (Le Hardi) 1270-1285 

Philip IV, the Fair (Le Bel) 1285-1314 

Louis X, the Quarreler (Le Hutin) 1314-1316 

Philip V, the TaU (Le Long) 1316-1322 

Charles IV, the Fair (Le Bel) 1322-1328 

IV 

The House of Valois 

(Including the Valois-direct — the Valois-Orleans — and the 

Valois- Angouleme) 

1328-1589 

Philip VI (Valois) 1328-1350 

John II, the Good (Le Bon) 1350-1364 

(John I (le Posthume), was the posthumous son of 
Louis X, and lived only a few days) .... 

Charles V, the Wise (Le Sage) 1364-1380 

Charles VI, the Well-Beloved, also the Mad (Le Bien- 

AimeorLeFou) 1380-1422 

Charles VII, the Victorious (Le Victorieux) . . . 1422-1461 

Louis XI 1461-1483 

Charles VIII 1483-1498 

Louis XII, the Father of the People (le Pere du peuple) 1498-1515 

521 



APPENDIX 



Francis I 
Henry II 
Francis II 
Charles IX 
Henry III 



1515-1547 
1547-1559 
1559-1560 
1560-1574 
1574-1589 



The Bourbons 

1589-1793 

Henry IV 

Louis XIII, the Just (Le Juste) .... 
(Regency of Marie de Medicis 1610-1614) . 

Louis XIV, the Great, the Sun King (Le Grand) 
Regency of Anne of Austria, 1643-1661) . 

Louis XV, the Well-Beloved (Le Bien-Aime) . 
(Regency of Duke of Orleans, 1715-1723) . 

Louis XVI 

(Louis XVII proclaimed King of France by the 
Emigres after the execution of Louis XVI ; supposed 
to have died 1795) 

VI 

First Republic 

1792-1804 



1589-1610 
1610-1643 

1643-1715 

1715-1774 

1774-1792 



National Convention. 
Directory . . 
The Consulate . 



Sept. 1792-Oct. 1795 
Oct. 1795-Nov. 1799 
Nov. 1799-Oct. 1804 



VII 

First Empire 

1804-1814 

Napoleon I 1804-1814 

(Napoleon II, titular Emperor of the French, born 
1811, died 1832) 

VIII 

The Restoration 
1814-1830 
First Restoration: Louis XVIII . . 

Second Restoration : Charles X 

Louis-Philippe I, the Citizen King (le Roi Citoyen) 

522 



1814-1824 
1824-1830 
1830-1848 



APPENDIX 

IX 

Second Republic 
1848-1852 

Provisional Government Feb. to Dec. 1848 

Louis Napoleon, President . . . . . . . 1848-1852 

X 

Second Empire 

1852-1870 
Napoleon III 1852-1870 

XI 

Third Republic 
Committee of Public Defense 1870-1871 

Presidents 

L.A.Thiers . . 1871-1873 

Marshal MacMahon 1873-1879 

Jules Grevy . . . . ' . 1879-1887 

Marie F. S. Carnot 1887-1894 

Jean Casimir Perier 1894-1895 

Felix Francois Faure 1895-1899 

Emile Loubet 1899-1906 

Armand Fallieres 1906- 



BIBLIOGEAPHY 



Gaston Paris 

Pio Rajna 

Leon Gautier 

Emil Seelman 

Franz Scholle 

Guizot 

Kr. Nyrop . 



D. Nisard . . 
Jean Fleury 

Petit de Julleville 



Augtjstin Thierry . 
Emile Faguet . 



GUSTAVE LANSON 



Histoire litteraire de la France; La littera- 
ture frangaise au moyen-dge; La poesie 
du moyen-dge; Les romans de la table 
ronde; Francois Villon. 

Contribute alia Storia dell'Epopea e del 
romanza medievale; Le origini delVEpo- 
pea Francese; Richerche intorno di Reali 
di Francia. 

La Chanson de Roland; Bibliographie des 
legendes epiques; Les fipopees frangaises. 

Bibliographie des altfranzosischen Rolands- 
lieds. 

Zur Kritik des Rolandslieds. 

Essais sur V 'histoire de France. 

Grammaire historique de la langue fran- 
gaise; Den Old-franske Heltedigtning — 
Italian translation, Storia delVEpopea 
Francese nel medio evo. 

Histoire de la litterature frangaise. 

La litterature frangaise; Marivaux et le 
marivaudage. 

Histoire de la langue et de la litterature fran- 
gaises des origines a 1900, publiee sous 
la direction de Petit de Julleville; Les 
mysteres; Les comedies en France au 
moyen-dge. 

Lettres sur Vhistoire de France. 

Histoire de la litterature frangaise; Etudes 
sur le XV I e siecle; Le dix-neuvieme siecle; 
La Fontaine. 

Corneille; Voltaire; Boileau; Nivellede la 
Chaussee et la comedie larmoyante (Les 
Grands Bcrivains Frangais). 

524 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Jules Lemaitre 
G. Pellissier 



Andrea be Magnabotti 
Ch. Atjbertin 



San Marte 



John Rhys . 
H. Zimmer 
Eduard Engel 
A. Franklin 
F. Lot . . 
Th. Benfey 



Joseph Bedier . 
Saint-Marc Girardin 

A. Villemain 



E. Langlois .... 

C. Beaufils 

a. molinier 
Max Muller 
Reinhold Koehler 
Ten Brink .... 
Anatole de Montaiglon 



C. HlPPEAU . 

Henry Carrington 
Sismondis . . 



Impressions de thedtre; Decadents-Deliqu- 
escents-Symboliques . 

Le mouvement litteraire au XIX e sihcle; 
Morceaux choisis des pokes du XVI 9 
siecle. 

Reali di Francia. 

Histoire de la langue et de la litterature 
francaises au moyen-dge. 

Die Artussage und die Marchen des Roten 
Buches von Hergest; Gottfrieds von Mon- 
mouth Historia regum Britaniae. 

Studies in the Arthurian legend. 

Keltische Studien. 

Geschichte der franzosischen Literatur. 

La Sorbonne, ses origines, etc. 

Mudes sur Merlin. 

Pantchatantra fiXnf Bucher indischer Fabeln, 
Marchen und Erzdhlungen ubersetzt mit 
Einleitung. 

Les fabliaux; Les legendes epiques. 

La Fontaine et les Fabulistes; J. J. Rous- 
seau, sa vie et ses ouvrages. 

Discours et melange litteraires; M. de Cha- 
teaubriand, sa vie, ses ouvrages et son 
influence; Cours de litterature. 

Origines et sources du Roman de la Rose; 
Essais sur les danses des morts. 

tltude sur la vie et les poesies de Charles 
d'Orleans. 

Etudes d' histoire du moyen-age. 

Essays. 

Aufsatze uber Marchen und volkslieder. 

Geschichte der Englischen Literatur. 

Recueil general et complet des fabliaux des 
XIII e et XIV e siecles; Recueil de poesies 
frangaises des XV e et XVI e siecles, mo- 
rales, facetieuses, etc. 

Le Bestiaire divin de Guillaume; le Bestiaire 
d 'amour de Richard. 

. Anthology of French poetry. 

Historical view of the Literature of the South 
of Europe — Roscoe's translation. 
525 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Harriet W. Preston 
G. Saintsbury . 

S. DE SACY . 

E. Rathery . 
H. P. Junker 

P. TOLDO . . 

j. j. jusserand 
Voltaire 
A. Mennung 
Rene Doumic 

P. Pellisson 

F. L. Crousle . 
Desnoiresterres 

R. Mahrenholtz 



Maynard 

L. Perey et G. Maugras 

J. Barni 

H. Nadault de Buffon 

condorcet .... 

Penning 

P. Marieton 

s. rocheblave . . 

Ph. Chasles 

Rambert 

J. Janin 

E. RlGAL . . . . . 



Troubadours New and Old. 

French Literature. 

Varietes litteraires, morales et historiques; 

Lettres de Madame de Sevigne. 
De V influence de la litter ature et du genie de 

Vltalie sur les lettres francaises. 
Grundriss der Geschichte der franzosischen 

Literatur. 
Contributo alia studio delta Novella Fran- 

cese del XV et del XVI secoli. 
Shakespeare en France sous I'ancien regime, 
he siecle de Louis XIV. 
Der Sonettenstreit und seine Quellen. 
Portraits d'Ecrivains; Histoire de la littera- 

ture frangaise. 
Histoire de VAcademie frangaise. 
Fenelon et Bossuei. 
Voltaire et la societe frangaise du XVI I I e 

siecle. 
Voltaire's Leben und Werke; Die Revolution 

auf der Schaubuhne und in der Tages- 

dramatik. 
Voltaire, sa vie et ses ozuvres. 
La vie intime de Voltaire aux Delices et a 

Ferney. 
Histoire des idees morales et politiques en 

France au XVI I I e siecle. 
Buffon, sa famille, ses collaboraieurs et ses 

familiers. 
Etude biographique de Voltaire. 
Ducis als Nachahmer Shakespeares. 
Une Histoire d'amour: les Amants de Ve- 

nise; Jacques Jasmin. 
Lettres de George Sand a A. de Musset et a 

Sainte-Beuve. 
Etudes de litterature comparee. 
Ecrivains nationaux. 
Frangois Ponsard. 
Alexandre Hardy et le Theatre frangais a la 

fin du XVI e et au commencement du 

XVII e siecle. 

526 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



P. Lacroix . 

M. TOURNEUX 

A. Thierot . 
K. Schneider 
A. Mezieres . 

F. Gross . . 
fi. Pailleron. 
Fr. Sarcey . 
L. Lacour 

E. Legouve . 

G. Maugras . 
E. Geruzez . 

A. Roche 

A. Schultz . 



M. Sepet 



Fabre .... 
Julien Travers et 

ASSELIN . 

Gaste .... 



Peignot . 

H. F. Massmann 

Delaunay . 
Eugene de Bude 

A. Lefranc . 

LlARD . 

Waddington 
C. A. Desmaze 
Alfred Fouillee 
F. Bouillier. 
Le Duchat . 
Des Marets et 
E. Gebhart . 
P. Stapfer . 
A. Tilley 



Aug. 



Rathery 



Bibliographie Molieresque. 

Etudes de critique et de bibliographie. 

Voltaire en Prusse. 

Rousseau und Pestalozzi. 

Vie de Mirabeau. 

Goethe's Werther in Frankreich. 

Emile Augier. 

La Comedie Frangaise; Theatres divers. 

Gaulois et Parisiens. 

Eugene Scribe. 

Trois mois a la cour de Frederic. 

Histoire de la litter ature frangaise jusqu'en 

1789. 
Histoire des principaux ecrivains frangais 

depuis Vorigine jusqu'a nos jours. 
Das hojische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesdn- 

ger. 
Les Origines catholiques du theatre moderne; 

Le drame chretien au moyen-age. 
Etudes historiques sur les clercs de la basoche. 

Olivier Basselin. 

Olivier Basselin et les compagnons de Vaux- 

de-Vire. 
Recherches sur les danses des morts. 
Literatur der Totentdnze; die Baseler Toten- 

tdnze. 
Etude sur Alain Chartier. 
Vie de Guillaume Bude, fondateur du College 

de France. 
Histoire du College de France. 
L'Enseignement superieur en France. 
P. de La Ramee. 

P. Ramus, sa vie, ses ecrits, sa mort. 
Histoire de la philosophic. 
Histoire de la philosophic cartesienne. 
Rabelais. 
Rabelais. 

Rabelais, la Renaissance et la Reforme. 
Rabelais, sa personne, son genie, son ceuvre. 
Frangois Rabelais. 
527 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



P. BOUHOURS. . 

Capefigue 
bonnefon 

E. DOWDEN . 

Funck-Brentano 

VlTET 
DOUEN 

Racan 

J. VlANEY 

P. Albert 



Genin . . 
C. Lenient . 
Sainte-Beuve 

Bouillet . 



Haureau . 
rousselot 
Ch. de Remusat 
a. schwegler 

Sainte-Atjlaire 

Cousin 

Ch. Livet 

Somaize 

Lavisse 

Lessing 

Lalanne 

L. Arnotjld 

COMTE HORRIC DE BEAU 
CAIRE 

Ferdinand Brunetiere 



Vie de Saint Ignace. 

Saint Ignace et les Jesuites. 

Montaigne et ses amis; Beaumarchais (Les 

tlcrivains celebres de France). 
Michel de Montaigne. 
Le Drame des Poisons. 
Clement Marot. 

Clement Marot et le psautier huguenot. 
Vie de Malherbe. 
Mathurin Regnier. 
La Litterature francaise des origines a la fin 

du XV I e siecle; La Litterature francaise 

au XVIII e siecle. 
Lettres et nouvelles lettres de Marguerite 

d'Angouleme. 
La Satire en France au moyen-dge; La Satire 

en France au XVI e siecle. 
Causeries du Lundi; Nouveaux Lundis; 

Critiques et Portraits litteraires; Port- 
Royal. 
Porphyre; son r&le dans Vecole neoplatoni- 

cienne. 
Sur la philosophic scolastisque. 
Etudes de la philosophic dans le moyen-dge. 
Abelard, sa vie, sa philosophic, et sa theologie. 
History of Philosophy with Annotations by 

J. H. Stirling. 
Histoire de la Fronde. 
La societe francaise du XVII e siecle. 
Precieux et Precieuses. 
Dictionnaire des Precieuses. 
Sully. 

Hamburgische Dramaturgic 
Brantome, sa vie et ses ecrits. 
Racan. 

Memoires du Cardinal de Richelieu. 

Manuel de V histoire de la litterature fran- 
caise; V evolution de la poesie lyrique en 
France au dix-neuvieme siecle; Honore 
de Balzac (French Men of Letters; trans- 
lation by R. L. Sanderson). 
528 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



G. Brandes . . , 

Theophile Gautier. 
p. morillot . . , 



Pierre Brun 

Aucoc . . 

P. Mesnard 

J. Demogeot 

Racine 

Gustave Larroumet 



H. Taine 



H. Jouin . . . 
Etienne Allaire 
J. Claretie . 



Beaudouin 
rosenkranz . 
J. Bertrand . 
Leo Claretie 
Guyot .. . 



E. RlTTER 

Paul Gautier 

F. J. PlCAVET 

Paul de Musset 
Arvede Barine 



Rod 

P. Bourget . 

Smiles 
Bernard Shaw 



Die Haupstromungen der Literatur des 19 ten 
Jahrhunderts. 

Les grotesques; Histoire du Romantisme. 

Scarron et le genre burlesque; Emile Augier, 
etude biographique et critique; Le Roman 
en France de 1610 jusqu'a nos jours. 

Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac. 

Ulnstitut de France. 

Histoire de VAcademie frangaise. 

Histoire de la litterature frangaise. 

Histoire de Port-Royal. 

Racine (Les Grands Ecrivains Francais); 
La comedie de Moliere. 

La Fontaine et ses fables; Essais de critique 
et d'histoire. 

Charles Le Brun et les arts sous Louis XIV. 

La Bruyere dans la maison de Conde. 

Le Roman en France au debut du XVIII e 
siecle; A. Dumas fils; Moliere, sa vie et ses 
oeuvres. 

La vie et les ozuvres de J. J. Rousseau. 

Diderot's Leben und Werke. 

D'Alembert. 

Florian. 

Le Poke Jean Regnard en son chateau de 
Grillon. 

Notes on Madame de Stael. 

Madame de Stael et Napoleon. 

Les Ideologues frangais. 

Biographie d' Alfred de Musset. 

A. de Musset (Les Grands Ecrivains Fran- 
gais). 

Stendhal. 

Essais de psychologie contemporaine. 

Jasmin — Barber, Poet, Philanthropist. 

Dramatic Opinions and Essays. 



35 



INDEX 

Note. — References to the biographies of authors are indicated by 
heavy type. 



A Propos d'un Cheval (V. Cherbu- 

iiez), 413. 
A Quoi Revent Les Jeunes Filles 

(A. de Musset), 382. 
Abbe" Constantin, L', (L. Halevy), 

486. 
Abbe Tigrane, L', (F. Fabre), 442. 
Abelard, P., 101 n. 1, 183. 
Ablugo de Castel-Culie, L', (Jas- 
min), 448. 
About, E., 412, 513, 515. 
Academie Franc aise, 163-165. 
Academie Goncotjrt, 430, 442. 
Actes des Apotres (Arnold and 

Simon Greban), 66. 
Adam, P., 443. 
Adam de la Halle, 91. 
Addison, 277 n. 1, 309. 
Adelphi (Terence), 218. 
Adrienne Lecouvreur (E. Scribe 

and E. Legouve), 482. 
^Eneid (Vergil), 160. 
^sop, 39, 234. 
Affaire Calas, 299 n. 1. 
Affaire Clemenceau, L', (A. Dumas 

fils), 474, 476. 
Affaire des Placards, 131. 
Affaires de Rome (Lamennais), 451. 
Ageorges, J., 443. 
Ag^silas (P. Coraeille), 173. 
Agnes de Meranie (F. Ponsard), 483. 
Aicard, J., 494. 



Aiglon, L', (E. Rostand), 491, 493. 
Ailes de la Prouesse (Raoul de Hou- 

dan), 48. 
Ailly, P. d', 238. 
Alberic de Besancon, 32 n. 2. 
Albert, P., 32, 113. 
Albertus (T. Gautier), 390. 
Alembert, d', 282, 296, 328, 329, 

333-334. 
Alexandre (J. Racine), 197. 
Alexandre de Bernay, 32. 
Alzire (Voltaire), 291, 296, 301. 
Amants (M. Donnay), 489. 
Ami des Femmes, L', (A. Dumas 

fils), 477. 
Ami des Hommes, L', (Mirabeau, 

the elder), 351. 
Ami des Lois, L', (Laya), 353. 
Ami Fritz, L' (Erckmann-Chatrian), 

412. 
Amiel, 378 n. 1. 
Amour, L', (J. Michelet), 461. 
Amour Medecin, L', (Moliere), 229, 

230. 
Amoureuse (G. de Porto-Riche), 489. 
Amoureuses (A. Daudet), 431. 
Amours de Psyche et de Cupidon, 

Les, (La Fontaine), 233. 
Amphitryon (Mohere), 218, 221. 
Amusements serieux, etc. (Dufres- 

ny), 309. 
Amyot, J., 118, 125. 



531 



INDEX 



Analyse raisonnee, etc. (Chateau- 
briand), 457. 
Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton), 

236. 
Ancey, G., 487. 
Ancien Regime, etc., L', (A. de 

Tocqueville), 461. 
Andre" (G. Sand), 403. 
Andre del Sarto (A. de Musset), 382- 

383. 
Andrieux, 359, 360 n. 2. 
Andromaque (J. Racine), 197, 198. 
Ane, L', (V. Hugo), 379. 
Angelo (V. Hugo), 373. 
Annee Terrible, L', (V. Hugo), 

379. 
Anselme, 182, 183. 
Anthology of French Poetry (H. 

Carrington), 85 n. 1. 
Antique Cycle, 31. 
Antony (A. Dumas pere), 407. 
Aphrodite (Louys), 446. 
Apollinaris Sidonius, 2 n. 1. 
Appel au Soldat, L', (M. Barres), 

441. 
Aquinas, Saint-Thomas, 183. 
Arcadia (Sannazaro), 153. 
Arene, P., 443. 
Argenson, d', 277, 281, 293. 
Argent, L', (E. Zola), 435. 
Ariosto, 26, 31 n. 1, 45. 
Aristophanes, 236, 471. 
Aristotle, 110, 167, 183, 185 n. 6, 

357, 402. 
Arlequin Poli par 1' Amour (Mari- 

vaux), 340. 
Armature, L', (P. Hervieu), 489. 
Arnaud, Baculard d', 335. 
Arnaud, Daniel, 88, 89. 
Arnaud de Marveil, 80-81. 
Arnauld, Antoine, 190, 192, 193, 

256. 
Arnauld d'ANDiLLY, 190. 
Arnault, A. V., 353, 359, 360 n. 2. 



Arsace et Ism6nie (Montesquieu), 

309. 
Art au XVIIIeme Siecle, L', (E. and 

J. de Goncourt), 429. 
Art Poetique (Boileau), 93, 96 n. 1, 

210, 215, 345. 
Art Poetique (Verlaine), 445. 
Arthur (E. Sue), 410. 
Arthur, King, 10 n. 1, 27, 28. 
Assas, Chevalier d', 280 n. 1. 
Assassin, L', (J. Claretie), 442. 
Assommoir, L\ (E. Zola), 435, 437. 
Assouci, C. d', 161. 
Astie, 194. 

Astree, L\ (H. d' Urte), 153. 
Atala (Chateaubriand), 362, 363. 
Athalie (J. Racine), 201, 208. 
Atree et Thyeste (Crebillon), 267. 
Attaque du Moulin (E. Zola), 434. 
Attila (P. Corneille), 173. 
Au Bon Soleil (P. Arene), 443. 
Au Bonheur des Dames (E. Zola), 

435. 

AUBANEL, 448. 
AUBERTIN, C, 25. 

Aubignac, d', 167. 

Aubigne, A. d', 118, 142, 146-148. 

AUBRI DE BOURGOING, 20. 

Aucassin et Nicolette, 43, 44. 
Aufsatze iiber Marchen, etc. (R. 

Koehler), 34 n. 7. 
Augier, E., 468, 473, 474, 478-481. 
Augustinus (Jansenius), 189. 
Aulularia, The, (Plautus), 228 n. 1. 
Aurora Leigh (Mrs. Browning), 368 

n. 3, 470 n. 2. 
Autran, J., 483. 
Aux Creux des Sillons (P. Vernon), 

443. 
Avare, L', (Moliere), 218, 221. 
Aventures de Quatre Femmes, etc. 

(A. Dumas fils), 474. 
Aventures du Baron de Foeneste 

(A. d'Aubigng), 147. 



532 



INDEX 



Aventuriere, L', (E. Augier), 479. 
Aziyade* (P. Loti), 414. 

Babouc (Voltaire), 291. 

Babrius, 234. 

Bacon, F., 186, 290, 319, 329, 402. 

Bacon, R., 184. 

Bague de l'Oubli, La, (Rotrou), 168. 

Baif, 132, 141. 

Baiser, Le, (T. de Banville), 487 n. 1. 

Bajardo, 26. 

Bajazet (J. Racine), 199, 203, 206- 

207. 
Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis 

(F. ViUon), 98, 100-102. 
Ballade des Pendus (F. Villon), 98- 

100. 
Ballanche, P. S., 450. 
Balzac, G. de, 138 n. 3, 157, 171. 
Balzac, H. de, 236, 361, 417-423, 

424, 425, 426, 495, 505, 518. 
Balzac, Honore de (Brunetiere), 

421 n. 1. 
Banville, T. de, 444, 487 n. 1. 
Barante, de, 458. 
Barbier, A., 370, 395, 400. 
Barbier de Seville, Le, (Beaumar- 

chais), 338, 339. 
Barres, M., 441. 
Basoche, 69. 
Basselin, O., 92-94. 
Bataille de Dames (E. Scribe and 

E. LegouvC), 482. 
Baudelaire, 444. 
Bayle, P., 51, 272-273. 
Bazin, R., 443. 
Beauchesne, 381. 
Beaumarchais, 322, 335, 336-340, 

349, 473, 478. 
Beaumont, Mme. de, 369. 
Beaux Messieurs de Boisdore\ Les, 

(G. Sand), 405. 
Becque, H., 486-487, 490. 
Bedier, J., 18, 35. 



Belisaire (Marmontel), 344. 

Bellau, R., 132. 

Benfey, T., 34, 39 n. 1. 

Benoit de Sainte-More, 32. 

Benserade, 156, 212. 

Beranger, 36 n. 1, 123 n. 2, 395- 

398, 399, 458. 
Berenice (J. Racine), 199, 205-206. 
Bergerac, C. de, 161. 
Bergerat, E., 494. 
Bergier, Abbe, 329. 
Bernard de Ventadour, 80, 86-87. 
Bernardln de Saint-Pierre, 327, 

346-348, 414. 
Bernier, 37. 
Bernstein, 494. 
Beroul, 30. 
Berquln, L. de, 110. 
Bertaut, 137. 

Bertrand de Born, SO, 82-83. 
Bertrand et Raton (E. Scribe), 482. 
Bestiaires, 47. 

Bete, La, (V. Cherbuliez), 413. 
Bete Humaine, La, (E. Zola), 435, 

436. 
Beze, de, 110 n. 1, 118. 
Bible de Vatable, 109. 
Bible du Soldat, La, 118 n. 3. 
Bibles, 45. 
Bibliotheque de mon Oncle, La, (R. 

Toepffer), 394. 
Bienfaiteurs, Les, (E. Brieux), 488. 
Bijoux Indiscrets, Les, (Diderot), 

331. 
Biographies (V. Cousin), 452. 
Bisson, A., 494. 
Bjornson, 488. 
Blanc, C, 470. 
Blanchet, P., 73 n. 1. 
Ble Qui Leve, Le, (R. Bazin), 443. 
Boccaccio, 31 n. 3, 38, 45, 70 n. 1, 

105, 106, 148, 236. 
Bodel, J., 31, 44, 91. 
Boethius, 182. 



533 



INDEX 



Boileau, 53, 93, 96 n. 1, 135, 142, 
161, 167, 196, 197, 198, 200, 201, 
309-216, 222, 226, 233, 244, 255, 
261, 268, 345, 447. 

BoiSROBERT, 164. 
BoLINGBROKE, 289. 

Bon Roi Dagobert, Le, (Ri voire), 

494 n. 4. 
Bonald, de, 450. 
Bornier, H. de, 483. 
Bossuet, 158, 189, 237, 239-244, 

247 n. 1, 250, 255, 261, 372, 451. 
Boubouroche (G. Courteline), 488. 
Bouchardy, 484. 
Boucher, 430. 
Bouchor, 495. 
Bouhelier, G. de, 442. 
Boule, La, (Meilhac and Halevy), 

485. 
Boule de Suif (G. de Maupassant), 

438. 
Bourdaloue, 239, 244-245, 249, 

250. 
Bourgeois de Pont-Arcy, Les, (V. 

Sardou), 472. 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Le, (Mo- 

liere), 221, 229. 
Bourges, E., 430 n. 1. 
Bouget, P., 424, 426, 440-441, 

494. 
Bourgoing, le Pere, 239. 
Bourse, La, (F. Ponsard), 483. 
Bouvard et Pecuchet (G. Flaubert), 

428. 
Brantome, 144, 145-146. 
Breton Cycle, 26-31. 
Brieux, E., 488. 
Britannicus (J. Racine), 199, 204- 

205. 
Brizeux, 370. 
Broglie, due de, 462 . 
Browning, Mrs., 368 n. 3, 470. 
Brueys, Abb6, 73. 
Brunet, 448. 



Brunetiere, F., 102, 119, 175, 225, 

266, 421, 422, 440, 455, 466, 493, 

518. 
Brutus (Voltaire), 296. 
Bude, G., 108, 109. 
Buffon, 280, 284, 315-319, 329, 

347. 
Bug Jargal (V. Hugo), 376, 378. 
Burgraves, Les, (V. Hugo), 373, 468. 
Buridan, J., 101 n. 2, 184. 
Byron, 363, 371, 372, 382, 383, 384, 

402, 483. 

9a Ira, 354-355. 

Cabale des Importants, 150. 

Cafe" de Surate, Le, (Bernardin de 

Saint-Pierre), 347. 
Caigniez, 335. 
Calderon, 1, 344. 
Caligula (A. Dumas pere), 407. 
Calila et Dimna (Silvestre de Sacy), 

34 n. 4. 
Calvin, J., 110-114, 118, 132, 161 

n. 2, 239. 
Camaraderie, La, (E. Scribe), 482. 
Campistron, J. G. de, 266. 
Canard Sauvage, Le, (Ibsen), 488 

n. 2. 
Candide (Voltaire), 292, 303. 
Cantilene de Sainte-Eulalie, 14. 
Cantilene Saucourt, 14. 
Cantiques Spirituels (J. Racine), 

201. 
Capdevtlle, 443. 
Capitaine Fracasse (T. Gautier), 

160, 390. 
Capus, A., 494. 
Caracteres, Les, (La Bruyere), 263- 

265. 
Cardenal, P., 90. 
Carmagnole, La, 355. 
Carmen (P. Merimee), 423. 
Caro, E. M., 464. 
Carpani, 426. 



534 



INDEX 



Carrel, A.. 458. 
Castro, Guilhelm de, 177 n. 1. 
Catherine (J. Sandeau), 406. 
Catherine Howard (A. Dumas pere), 

407. 
Cattnat, N. de, 145. 
Causeries du Lundi (Sainte-Beuve), 

382, 465. 
Caveau, Le, 398. 
Caylus, Mme. de, 255. 
Cenacle, Le, 381, 382, 385, 392. 
Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (A. de La 

Salle), 105. 
Centlivre, S., 277. 
Cephise (H. Greville), 413. 
C6sar Birotteau (Balzac), 419. 
Cesarine Dietrich (G. Sand), 405. 
Chambre Ardente, 121. 
Chambre Bleue, 152, 156, 158. 
Chamfort, N., 352. 
Champion des Dames, Le, (M. Le 

Franc), 105. 
Chanson d'Aliscans, 19. 
Chanson de Roland, 13, 19, 20-23, 

25. 
Chanson des Gueux (J. Richepin), 

446. 
Chanson des Saisnes (J. Bodel), 31. 
Chansonnier Historique, Le, 278. 
Chansons de Bilitis (Louys), 446. 
Chansons de Geste, 11, 18, 21, 25, 

107. 
Chansons de Toile, 77. 
Chant du Depart, Le, (M. J. Ch6- 

nier), 353. 
Chanticler (E. Rostand), 492-493. 
Chants du Crepuscule (V. Hugo), 

379. 
Chapeau de Paille d'ltalie, Le, (E. 

Labiche), 485. 
Chapelain, 152, 157, 163, 167, 218. 
Chapelle, 161 n. 2, 197, 214. 
Characteristics of Virtues, etc. 

(Hall), 263 n. 1. 



Characters or Witty Descriptions, 

etc. (Overbury), 263 n. 1. 
Charlemagne, 2, 15, 17, 20, 24, 26, 

27, 136, 375. 
Charles IX (M. J. Chenier), 353. 
Charles d'ORLEANS, 92, 94-95. 
Charlier, see Gerson. 
Charlotte Corday (F. Ponsard), 483, 
Chartier, Alain, 61-62, 103. 
Chartreuse de Parme, La, (Stendhal), 

425, 426. 
Chasles, P., 464. 
Chateaubriand, 144, 266, 327, 

361-365, 369, 381, 410, 414, 427, 

457, 458, 504, 505. 
Chateaux en Espagne, Les, (Colin 

d'Harleville), 354. 
Chatelet, marquise du, 291. 
Chatiments, Les, (V. Hugo), 379. 
Chatterton, 344, 387. 
Chatterton (A. de Vigny), 387-388. 
Chaucer, 38, 45, 380. 
Chaumiere Indienne, La, (Bernar- 

din de Saint-Pierre), 347, 348. 
Chemin, Le Plus Court, Le, (A. 

Karr), 395. 
Chemin du Bois, Le, (A. Theuriet), 

413. 
Chemineau, Le, (J. Richepin), 483. 
Chenier, Andre\ 345-346, 381, 387. 
Chenier, M. J., 353. 
Cherbuliez, V., 413. 
Cherie (E. de Goncourt), 430. 
Chevalier au Barizel, Le, 37. 
Chevalier au Chainse, Le, 35. 
Chevalier au Lion, Le, 28. 
Chevalier de Maison-Rouge, Le, (A. 

Dumas pere), 408. 
Chevre d'Or, La, (P. Arene), 443. 
Chevrier, Le, (F. Fabre), 442. 
Child, T., 454. 

Chonchette (M. Prevost), 439. 
Chopin, 360, 404. 
Chouans, Les, (Balzac), 418. 



535 



INDEX 



Chrestien de Troyes, 27, 28, 29. 
Christian Institution (Calvin), 117. 
Christine de Pisan, 54. 
Chronicles, 55-61. 
Chroniques du Temps de Charles IX 

(P. Merim&i), 423. 
Chute d'un Ange, La, (Lamartine), 

371. 

ClBBER, C, 277. 

Cid, Le, (Corneille), 167, 170, 171, 

173, 176-177, 212. 
Cigue, La, (E. Augier), 479. 
Cinna (Corneille), 172, 173, 179- 

180. 
Cinq Semaines en Ballon (J. Verne), 

413. 
Cinq-Mars (A. de Vigny), 387. 
Cit6 Antique, La, (Fustel de Cou- 

langes), 461. 
Clairiere, La, (M. Donnay and L. 

Descaves), 489 n. 2. 
Clara D'Anduze, 80. 
Claretie, J., 442, 473, 494. 
Clarissa Harlowe (Richardson), 342. 
Claude Gueux (V. Hugo), 376, 378. 
Claudie (G. Sand), 405. 
Claudine a l'£cole (Willy), 442. 
Clavijo (Goethe), 338. 
Clelie (Mile, de Scudery), 154. 
Clemangis, de, 238. 
Clemence Isaure, 134 n. 2. 
Cleopatre (V. Sardou and Moreau), 

473 n. 1. 
Cleopatre Captive, (Jodelle), 140. 
Clitandre (Corneille), 169, 173. 
Closerie des Genets, La, (F. Soulie), 

410. 
Colbert, 164, 200. 
College de France, 108 n. 2. 

COLLETET, 170. 

Collin d'HARLEViLLE, 295, 354. 
Colomba (P. Merimee), 424. 
Com6die de la Mort (T. Gautier), 
390. 



Com^die des Com^diens, La, (Scud- 
ery), 168. 
Com^die des Tuileries, La, (Rich- 
elieu), 170. 
ComSdie Francaise, 68 n. 1, 218. 
Com&iie Humaine, La, (Balzac), 

419. 
Comediens, Les, (C. Delavigne), 389. 
Comedies et Proverbes (A. de Mus- 

set), 382. 
Commentaires (Montluc), 144. 
Commines, P. de, 56, 61, 144^ 
Compagnon du Tour de France, Le, 

(G. Sand), 404. 
Comte, A., 452. 
Comte Kostia, Le, (V. Cherbuliez), 

413. 
Comtesse d'Escarbagnas, La, (Mo- 

liere), 223. 
Comtesse de Rudolstadt (G. Sand), 

404. 
Comtesse Sarah, La, (G. Ohnet), 

411. 
Condamnation de Banquet, La, 

(Nicolas de La Chesnaye), 71. 
Conde, Prince de, 154, 200, 220, 

231, 243, 244, 261, 281, 287. 
Condillac, 290, 329. 
Condorcet, 297, 299, 334, 368. 
Confession d'un Enfant du Siecle 

(A. de Musset), 383. 
Confession d'une Jeune Fille, La, 

(G. Sand), 405. 
Confession du Sieur de Sancy, La, 

(A. d'Aubigne"), 147. 
Confessions (J. J. Rousseau), 320, 

326. 
Confidences, Les, (Lamartine), 372. 

CONFRERIE DE LA PASSION, 68. 
CONGREVE, 290. 

Conjuration de Fiesque (de Retz), 

260. 
Conquete de Constantinople, De la, 

(Villehardouin), 56. 



536 



INDEX 



Conquete de la Germanie, etc. (F. 

Mignet), 460. 
Conquete de Plassans, La, (E. Zola), 

435. 
Conrart, V., 163. 
Consent de 1813, Le, (Erckmann- 

Chatrian), 412. 
Conseils a un Journaliste (Voltaire), 

296. 
Considerations, etc. (J. de Maistre), 

450. 
Considerations, etc. (Mme.de Stael), 

368. 
Consuelo (G. Sand), 404. 
Contagion, La, (E. Augier), 480. 
Contemplations, Les, (V. Hugo), 

379. 
Contemporains, Les, (J. Lemaitre), 

416, 466. 
Contes a Ninon (E. Zola), 435. 
Contes d'Aujourd'hui (J. Lemaitre), 

416. 
Contes d'Espagne et d'ltalie (A. de 

Musset), 382. 
Contes de la Reine de Navarre, Les, 

(E. Scribe and E. Legouve*), 482. 
Contes de ma Mere l'Oye (C. Per- 

rault), 70 n. 1. 
Contes des Provinces de France 

(Sebillot), 447 n. 1. 
Contes Drolatiques (Balzac), 236, 

420. 
Contes Fantastiques (Hoffman), 

390. 
Contes et Nouvelles (La Fontaine), 

233, 236. 
Contes et Nouvelles (T. Gautier), 

390. 
Contrat Social, Le, (J. J. Rousseau), 

52, 321-322. 
Controverse des Sexes, etc. (Gratien 

du Pont), 105. 
Cooper, F., 363, 418. 
Copernicus, 185. 



Coppee, F., 444 n. 1, 445, 494, 506, 

515. 
Corbeaux, Les, (H. Becque), 487. 
Corinne (Mme. de Stael), 366, 367, 

368. 
Corneille, P., 139, 141, 142, 156, 

157, 159, 166-181, 190, 197, 199, 

202, 206, 214, 252, 255, 267, 273, 

300, 358, 468, 483. 
Corneille, T., 172. 
Correspondance Litteraire, etc. 

(Grimm), 334. 
Cospian, 158. 
Country Wife, The, (Wycherly), 

219 n. 3. 
Coupe et les Levres, La, (A. de 

Musset), 382. 
Cour de Paradis, La, 36. 
Courier, P. L., 395, 398-400, 458. 
Couronnement de Renart, 43. 
Cours de Philosophic Positive (A. 

Comte), 452. 
Court Mantel, Le, 36. 

COURTELINE, G., 487. 

Cousin, V., 194, 450, 451-452, 455. 
Coverley, Sir R. de, (Addison), 277 

n. 1. 
Crainquebille (A. France), 416. 
Crapelet, 90 n. 2. 
Crebillon, P. J. de, 266, 267-268, 

398 n. 1. 
Cretin, G., 103. 
Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, Le, 

(A. France), 416. 
Crispin, Rival de son Maitre (Le 

Sage), 271. 
Critical Essays (Diderot), 332. 
Critics, 463-467. 
Critique de l'^cole des Femmes, La, 

(Moliere), 219. 
Cromwell (V. Hugo), 372, 373. 
Cruelle lilnigme (P. Bourget), 440. 
Curee, La, (E. Zola), 435. 
Curel, F. de, 488, 489. 



537 



INDEX 



Curial, Le (Alain Chartier), 61. 
Cury, 494. 

Custine, Mme. de, 369. 
Cyclopaedia (Chambers), 328. 
Cyrano de Bergerac (E. Rostand), 
162, 491, 492, 493. 

Dacier, Mme., 213. 

Dalila (0. Feuillet), 412. 

Dame aux Cameras, La, (A. Dumas 
fils), 474, 475, 476, 479. 

Dancing Songs, 77. 

Dancourt, F. D., 271, 275. 

Danes, 109. 

Danse Macabre, 71. 

Dante, 5, 51, 53, 82, 88, 89, 106, 
386, 402. 

Daate, Le, (V. Sardou), 472. 

Darwin, 331. 

Daubenton, 315, 329. 

Daudet, A., 417, 430-433, 442. 

Daudet, L., 442. 

David (A. de Montchr6tien) , 140. 

David, d'Angers, 360, 369 n. 1. 

De Arte Amandi (Ovid), 48. 

De Arte Amatoria, etc. (Andr£), 84. 

De Buonaparte, etc. (Chateaubri- 
and), 364. 

De l'Allemagne (Mme. de Stael), 
367, 368. 

De 1' Amour (Stendhal), 426. 

De l'Esprit (Helvetius), 284. 

De l'Intelligence (H. Taine), 455. 

De la Litterature, etc. (Mme. de 
Stael), 366. 

De la Peinture en Italie (Stendhal), 
426. 

De la Terre a la Lune (J. Verne), 
413. 

De Vulgari Eloquentia, etc. (Dan- 
te), 5. 

Debacle, La, (E. Zola), 435, 436, 
437. 

Debat de l'Ame et du Corps, 47. 



Decadents, 445, 446, 447. 

Decameron (Boccaccio), 70 n. 1, 
105, 148, 236. 

D6dale, Le, (P. Hervieu), 489. 

Defense et Illustration, etc. (Du 
Bellay), 132. 

Deffand, Mme. du, 282, 283. 

Defoe, 497. 

Delacroix, 360. 

Delavigne, C, 388-389. 

Delille, Abbe\ 343-344, 359. 

Deliquescences, Les, (Floupette), 
445. 

Delphine (Mme. de Stael), 366, 367. 

Delphine Gay, 484. 

Demi-Monde, Le, (A. Dumas fils), 
475. 

Demi-Vierges, Les, (M. PreVost), 
439. 

Democratic en Amerique, La, (A. 
de Tocqueville), 461. 

Demogeot, 78, 174, 252. 

Denise (A. Dumas fils), 478. 

Dennery, 484. 

Depit Amoureux, Le, (Moliere), 217. 

Der Schiffbruch, (J. Brandes), 342. 

Deracines, Les, (M. Barres), 441. 

Dernier Abencerage, Le, (Chateau- 
briand), 80 n. 1, 364, 369. 

Dernier Banquet des Girondins, Le, 
(C. Nodier), 393. 

Dernier Jour d'un Condamn£, Le, 
(V. Hugo), 376, 378. 

Derniers Bretons, Les, (E. Souves- 
tre), 413. 

Deroulede, P., 494. 

Des Vers (G. de Maupassant), 437. 

D6sastre, Le, (P. Margueritte) , 441. 

Desastre de Lisbonne, Le, (Vol- 
taire), 303. 

Desaugiers, 398. 

Descartes, R., 186-187, 193, 210, 
252, 291. 

Descaves, L., 430 n. 1. 



538 



INDEX 



Deschamps, E., 381. 
Deschamps, G., 416. 
Desenchantes, Les, (P. Loti), 414. 
Deserteur, Le, (Mercier), 336. 
Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, 163, 

166, 198. 
Desmoulins, C, 353, 503. 
Desperiers, B., 111. 
Desportes, 137. 
Destinees, Les, (A. de Vigny), 386, 

388. 
Destouches, 275, 277, 341, 463. 
Deuii du Cloeher, Le, (J. Ageorges), 

443. 
Deux Changeurs, Les, 35. 
Deux Orphelines, Les, (Dennery), 

484. 
Devin de Village, Le, (J. J. Rous- | 

seau), 320. 
Diable Boiteux, Le, (Le Sage), 271. 
Dialogue des Marts (Fenelon), 246. 
Diana enamorada (Montemayor), 

153. 
Diane (Rotrou), 168. 
Diane de Lys (A. Dumas fils), 475. 
Diane de Poitiers, 130. 
Dickens, C, 421, 432. 
Dictionnaire des Onomatopees (C. 

Nodier), 393. 
Dictionnaire Historique, etc.(Bayle), 

273. 
Dictionnaire Philosophique (Vol- 
taire), 295. 
Dictionnaire Universel, etc. (C. 

Nodier), 393. 
Diderot, 283, 284, 296, 323, 329, 

330, 331-333, 335, 340. 
Didon se sacrifiant (Jodelle), 140. 
Digression sur les Modernes (Fon- 

tenelle), 273. 
Dionysos (J. Gasquet), 494. 
Diplomate, Le, (Scribe and Dela- 

vigne), 389. 
Disciple, Le, (P. Bourget), 440. 



Discours de la MSthode (Descartes), 

186. 
Discours de Reception, etc. (Buffon) , 

317 n. 1. 
Discours des Trois Unites (Cor- 

neille), 206. 
Discours Politiques et Militaires 

(La Noue), 145. 
Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle 

(Bossuet), 240-241, 243. 
Discours sur l'Homme (Voltaire), 

292. 
Discours sur l'lnegalite, etc. (J. J. 

Rousseau), 52, 321. 
Discours sur les Miseres, etc. (Ron- 
sard), 142. 
Discours sur les Sciences, etc. (J. J. 

Rousseau), 321. 
Distrait, Le, (Regnard), 270. 
Dit de Berenger, 36. 
Dits, 45. 
Divorce, Le, (P. Bourget and Cury), 

494 n. 6. 
Divorcons (V. Sardou), 472. 
Dix Annees d'Exil (Mme. de Stael), 

368. 
Dix Ans d'Etudes Historiques (A. 

Thierry), 459. 
Dix Contes (J. Lemaitre), 416. 
Docteur Akakia, Le, (Voltaire), 

294. 
Docteur Herbaut, Le, (J. Sandeau), 

406. 
Docteur Pascal, Le, (E. Zola), 435. 
Docteur Rameau, Le, (G. Ohnet), 

411. 
Doigts de Fee, Les, (Scribe and Le- 

gouve), 482. 
Dolet, E., 110, 113. 
Don Cesar de Bazan (Dennery), 

484. 
Don Japhet d'Arm£nie (Scarron), 

216. 
Don Juan (Byron), 382. 



539 



INDEX 



Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre 

(Moliere), 219, 229. 
Donnay, M., 489. 
Doon de Mayence, 19. 
Dora (V. Sardou), 472. 
Dorat, J., 109, 132. 
Dosia (H. Greville), 413. 
Doumic, R., 477, 490, 496. 
Dramatic Opinions (B. Shaw), 472 

n. 2. 
Drame d'Adam, Le, 64. 
Drame des Prophetes du Christ, 

Le, 63. 
Drames de Famille (P. Bourget), 

441. 
Drames Philosophiques (E. Renan), 

454. 
Droits Nouveaux (Coquillart), 73. 
Dryden, 215. 
Du Barry, Mme., 280. 
Du Bartas, 118. 
Du Bellay, G., 144. 
Du Bellay, J., 129, 132-133, 140, 

142. 
Du Boccage, 277. 
Du Cange, 83 n. 1, 335. 
Du Cerceau, 253 n. 2. 
Du Pape (J. de Maistre), 450. 
Du Perron, 239. 
Du Ryer, 166. 

Du Theatre, etc. (Mercier), 358. 
Du Vrai, du Beau, etc. (V. Cousin), 

452. 
Ducis, 353-354. k 
Duclos, 283. 
Dufresny, 271, 275, 309. 
Dumas, A., fils, 468, 473, 474-478, 

479, 488, 490. 
Dumas, A., pere, 398, 406-410, 468, 

474, 484, 506, 518. 
Duns Scotus, 183. 
Dupe, La, (G. Ancey), 488. 
Dupont de Nemours, 330, 331. 
Duvernet, Abb6, 299. 



ECHEGAKAY, 449. 

Ecole des Femmes, L', (Moliere), 
219. 

Nicole des Maris, L', (Moliere), 219. 

Nicole des Meres, L', (Nivelle de La 
Chaussee), 341. 

£cole des Vieillards, L', (C. Dela- 
^ vigne), 389. 

Ecole Naturiste, 442. 

^cossaise, L', (Montchretien), 140. 

lScossaise, L', (Voltaire), 303. 

Edouard Manet (E. Zola), 435. 

Education Sentimentale, L', (Flau- 
bert), 427. 

Effrontes, Les, (E. Augier), 479, 480. 

Eginhard, 20 n. 3. 

Eidons, 329. 

Eilhard Von Oberge, 30. 

El Diablo Cojuelo (Guevara), 271. 

Elements de Philosophic (d'Alem- 
bert), 333. 

Elements de la Philosophic de New- 
ton (Voltaire), 291. 

Elements d 'Ideologic (Destut de 
Tracy), 368 n. 2. 

Elevations sur les Mysteres (Bos- 
suet), 243. 

Eliot, G., 440. 

Elle et Lui (G. Sand), 405. 

£loges (d'Alembert), 333. 

^loges des Academiciens (Fonte- 
nelle), 273. 

6maux et Camees (T. Gautier), 390. 

£migre\ L', (P. Bourget), 441. 

Emile (J. J. Rousseau), 322-323, 
325. 

Emilia Galotti (Lessing), 332. 

Emperor Who Condemned To 
Death His Nephew, The, 70. 

En Menage (Huysmans), 439. 

En Route (Huysmans), 439. 

Enclos, Ninon de L', 255, 286-288. 

Encyclopedic, 284, 296, 328-330, 
333. 



540 



INDEX 



Encyclopedists, 127, 161, 280, 

282, 323, 334. 
Endriague, L\ (Piron), 343. 
Endymion (Gombaud), 157. 
Enfant Prodigue, L', (H. Becque), 

486. 
Enfant Prodigue, L', (Voltaire), 

291. 
Enfants d'Edouard, Les, (C. Dela- 

vigne), 389. 
Enfants Sans Souci, 69. 
Enfer, L', (Marot), 130. 
Engrenage, L', (E. Brieux), 488. 
Enigme, L', (P. Hervieu), 490. 
Enlevement, L', (H. Becque), 486. 
Enlevement de la Redoute, L', 

(Merimee), 423. 
Entretiens, etc. (Fontenelle), 161, 

273. 
Envers d'une Sainte (F. de Curel), 

488. 
Epicurus, 185 n. 9. 
£pinay, Mme. d', 283, 323. 
^pitres (Boileau), 209. 
^Ipreuve, L', (Marivaux), 340. 
Erasmus, 112. 
Erckmann-Chatrian, 412. 
Erec and ^Inide, 28. 
Esprit des Lois, L', (Montesquieu), 

276, 283, 310, 311-313, 321. 
Esprits, Les, (Larivey), 142. 
Esquisse, etc. (Condorcet), 334. 
Essai sur l'Art Dramatique (Mer- 
rier), 336. 
Essai sur la Verite, etc. (Diderot), 

331. 
Essai sur le Despotisme (Mirabeau), 

351. 
Essai sur les Institutions Sociales 

(Ballanche), 451. 
Essai sur les Lettres de Cachet, etc. 

(Mirabeau), 351. 
Essai sur les Mceurs (Voltaire), 293, 

303. 



Essai sur les Revolutions (Chateau- 
briand), 362. 

Essais (Montaigne), 126. 

Essais de Psychologic Contempo- 
raine (P. Bourget), 440. 

ESTEVANVILLB GONZALEZ, 272. 

Esther (Racine), 201, 207-208, 356. 

ESTIENNE, H., 118. 

Estienne, R. and H., 109. 
£tape, L', (P. Bourget), 441. 
Ethici Charakteres (Theophrastus), 

263 n. 1. 
Ethics (Aristotle), 47. 
Ethics (Spinoza), 187. 
Etourdi, L\ (Moliere), 142, 217. 
Etrangere, L', (A. Dumas fils), 477. 
Etudes, etc. (Chateaubriand), 457. 
Etudes Analytiques, etc. (Balzac), 
^ 419. 
Etudes de la Nature (Bernardin de 

Saint-Pierre), 347. 
Etudes sur la R6volution Fran- 

caise (C. Nodier), 393. 
Eugenie Grandet (Balzac), 419, 422, 
Euphues (Lyly), 154. 
Jilvangeliste, L\ (A. Daudet), 432. 
Evolution des Genres, etc. (Brune- 

tiere), 466. 
Exilee, L\ (P. Loti), 415. 
Explication des Maximes, etc. (Fen- 

elon), 242. 
Exposition de la Foi Catholique 

(Bossuet), 240. 

Fables (Fenelon), 246. 
Fables (Florian), 344. 
Fables (La Fontaine), 233-235. 
Fabliaux, 34-54. 

Fabliaux, Les, (J. B6dier), 35 n. 1. 
Fabre, F., 442. 
Fabre d 'Eglantine, 354. 
Facheux, Les, (Moliere), 219. 
Faguet, E., 82, 127, 174, 202, 424, 
437, 465, 466, 467, 491. 



541 



INDEX 



Famille Benofton, La, (V. Sardou), 

471. 
Famine, La, etc. (Jean de la Taille), 

140. 
Tantome, Le, (P. Bourget), 441. 
Farce de Maitre Pathelin, La, 73-74. 
Farces, 72-74. 
Farel, 111. 
Fatraisies, 45. 
Faugere, 194. 
Fauriel, 80. 
Fausses Confidences, Les, (Mari- 

vaux), 340. 
Faust (Goethe), 65, 358. 
Faustin, La, (E. de Goncourt), 430. 
Faute de l'Abb6 Mouret, La, (E. 

Zola), 435. 
F6condite (E. Zola), 436. 
Fedora (V. Sardou), 469. 
Felibres, 448. 

Femme, La, (A. Bisson), 494 n. 2. 
Femme au XVIIIeme Siecle, La, 

(E. and J. de Goncourt), 429. 
Femme de Claude, La, (A. Dumas 

fils), 476. 
Femme de Trente Ans, La, (Balzac), 

419. 
Femmes Savantes, Les, (Moliere), 

155, 223, 225, 227-228. 
Fenelon, 213, 239, 242, 245-247, 

255, 266. 
Fernande (V. Sardou), 331, 471. 
Feuilles d'Automne (V. Hugo), 379, 

380. 
Feuillet, O., 405, 411-412, 414, 

484, 518. 
Feydeau, G., 494. 
Fichte, 452. 
Fille d'Eschyle, La, (J. Autran), 

483. 
Fille de Roland, La, (H. de Bornier), 

483. 
Fille du Cid, La, (C. Delavigne), 

389. 



Fille Elisa, La, (E. de Goncourt), 

430. 
Fille Sauvage, La, (F. de Curel), 

488. 
Filon, A., 433, 489. 
Fils de Giboyer, Le, (E. Augier), 

479. 
Fils de la Terre (Capdeville), 443. 
Fils Naturel, Le, (Diderot), 332. 
Fils Naturel, Le, (A. Dumas fils), 

477. 
Flatteur, Le, (J. B. Rousseau), 269. 
Flaubert, G., 361, 417, 427-428, 

437, 455. 
Flechier, E., 239, 247-248, 255. 
Fleury, J., 481. 
Flirt (P. Hervieu), 489. 
Floovant, 14, 19. 
Folie du Sage, La, (Tristan L'Her- 

mite), 168. 
Fonds de Giboyer, Le, (L. Veuillot), 

480. 
Fontaine, N., 190. 
Fontanes, 359. 
Fontenelle, 161, 161 n. 2, 273- 

274, 281, 287. 
Force des Choses, La, (P. Marguer- 

itte), 441. 
Formation Territoriale, etc., La, 

(F. Mignet), 460. 
Formey, J., 263. 
Fort en Theme (A. Karr), 395. 
Fortune des Rougon, La, (E. Zola), 

435. 
Fortunio (T. Gautier), 390. 
Fossiles, Les, (F. de Curel), 488. 
Foulke Fitz-Warin, 34. 
Fouquet, 231, 251, 256. 
Fourberies de Scapin, Les, (Moliere), 

161, 168, 223. 
Fourchambault, Les, (E. Augier), 

480. 
Fourier, C, 404. 
Fragonard, 430. 



542 



INDEX 



Franc Archer de Bagnolet, Le, 105. 
France, A., 35, 303, 415-416, 433, 

440, 445, 453, 463, 465, 466, 515 

n. 2. 
France Merveilieuse, La, (S£billot 

and Gaudoz), 447 n. 1. 
Francesca da Rimini (Dante), 27 

n. 2. 
Franciade, La, (Ronsard), 135. 
Francillon (A. Dumas fils), 478. 
Francis I, King, 70, 108, 109, 110, 

121, 123, 125, 130, 131, 132, 146, 

376. 
Francois le Champi (G. Sand), 405. 
Franklin, B., 280, 284, 299, 395. 
Frederick the Great, 284, 293, 

294, 295. 
FrSderique (M. Prevost), 439. 
French Press, 497-518. 
Freres Ennemis, Les, (J. Racine), 

197. 
Freres Zemganno, Les, (E. de Gon- 

court), 430. 
Froissart, 25, 59, 88, 144, 266. 
Fromont jeune et Risler aine (A. 

Daudet), 432. 
Fronde, La, 150, 151, 191, 252, 260. 
Frou-Frou (Meilhac and Halevy), 

485. 
Furetiere, A., 162, 197. 
Furie, La, (J. Bois), 494 n. 1. 
Fustel de Coulanges, 461. 

Gabrielle (E. Augier), 479. 
Gageure Imprevue, La, (Sedaine), 

160, 335. 
Gai Savoir, Gaie Science, 57 n. 1. 
Galerie du Palais, La, (Corneille), 

169, 173. 
Galiani, Abb<§, 284. 
Galileo, 185. 
Galliot du Pre, 105. 
Galvani, 280. 
Gambetta, 471. 



Gandillot, L., 494. 

Garat, 368. 

Gargantua, 119-120, 393. 

Garin de Monglane, 19. 

Garnier, R., 140. 

Gauthier-Garguille, 168, 216. 

Gautier, L., 15, 18, 20, 21, 25 n. 
1, 26. 

Gautier, T., 160, 360, 361, 370, 
389-391, 444, 463, 478, 505. 

Gautier de Coincy, 65. 

Gautier le Long, 36, 44. 

Gavant, Minard et Cie (Gondinet), 
485. 

Gay, 290. 

Gazette de Soret, 158 n. 1. 

Gendre de M. Poirier, Le, (E. Aug- 
ier), 406, 479. 

Genevieve (A. Karr), 395. 

Genevieve (Lamartine), 372. 

Genie du Christianisme, Le, (Cha- 
teaubriand), 362, 363. 

Genlis, Mme. de, 369. 

Geofprin, Mme., 282. 

Geoffroy, G., 430 n. 1. 

Geoffroy, J. L., 463^64. 

George Dandin (Moliere), 36, 72, 
221. 

Gericault, 360. 

Germanicus (A. V. Arnault), 353. 

Germinal (E. Zola), 435, 437. 

Germinie Lacerteux (E. and J. de 
Goncourt), 429. 

Gerson, 51, 53, 238. 

Gerusalemme Liberata (Tasso), 26. 

Geruzez, 257, 464. 

Geschichte der Englischen Literatur 
(Ten Brink), 34 n. 8. 

Gesta Dagoberti, 15. 

Gibbon, 284. 

Giera, 448. 

Gil Bias (Le Sage), 272. 

Gilbert, 344, 387. 

Girardin, Mme. de, 369. 



543 



INDEX 



GlRARDON, 255. 

Girart de Roussillon, 20, 80 n. 2. 

Girart de Viane, 19. 

Giratrz de Rousilho, 26. 

Girondins, 285, 356. 

Gismonda (V. Sardou), 472. 

Gli Sdegni Amorosi, 217 n. 2. 

Glichezare, H., 45. 

Glorieux, Le, (Destouches), 341. 

Godard, 141. 

Godeau, 129, 158, 163. 

Godfrey of Monmouth, 28, 30. 

Goethe, 42 n. 1, 160, 221 n. 2, 276, 
281, 298, 323, 324, 331, 338, 356, 
357, 358, 360, 363, 367, 394, 395, 
447. 

Goffredo (Tasso), 26. 

Gombaud, 157, 163. 

Goncourt, E. and J., 417, 428-430, 
487 n. 1. 

Gondinet, E., 485. 

Gongora, 153, 154. 

Gottfried Von Strassburg, 30. 

Gottsched, 215. 

goudimel, 118. 

Gournay, de, 330. 

Grail, The, (Robert de Boron), 29. 

Grand Careme (Massillon), 250. 

Grand Testament (F. Villon), 97. 

Grandeur et Decadence, etc. (Mon- 
tesquieu), 311. 

Grandison (Richardson), 342. 

Grands Rhetoriqueurs, 129. 

Gras, F., 449. 

Graziella (Lamartme), 372. 

Grece Contemporaine, La, (E. 
About), 412. 

Gresset, 275, 342. 

Greville, H., 413. 

Grimm, Baron, 283, 323, 329, 330, 
331, 334, 503. 

Gringoire, 70. 

Griselidis, 70. 

Gros, 360. 



Gros-Guillaume, 168, 216. 
Gross, Erhart, 70 n. 1. 
Grotesques, Les, (T. Gautier), 390. 
Gruet, J., 112. 
Guepes, Les, (A. Karr), 395. 
Guerre au Village, La, (Trarieux), 

488 n. 1. 
Guilbert de Berneville, 91 n. 1. 
Guillaume au Faucon, 35. 
Guillaume de Lorris, 45, 48-50. 
Guinault, Mile., 283. 
Guiraud, 381. 
Guiraut de Borneil, 88. 
Guirlande de Julie, 156. 
Guizot, 164, 452, 458, 459-460, 518. 
Gulliver's Travels (Swift), 161. 
Gutenberg, 107 n. 1. 
Guyon, Mme., 242, n. 1. 
Guyot de Provins, 45. 
Guzla, La, (P. Merimge), 423. 
Gyp, 443, 506. 

Habert, 163. 

Halevy, L., 485, 486. 

Hamburgische Dramaturgic (Lea- 
sing), 206 n. 1. 

Hamilton, 394. 

Hamon, 196. 

Han d'Islande (V. Hugo), 376, 378. 

Hardy, A., 141, 166. 

Hardy, T., 486. 

Harmonies de la Nature, Les, (Ber- 
nardin de Saint-Pierre), 347. 

Harmonies Poetiques (Lamartine), 
371. 

Hauptmann, 488. 

Hauranne, Duvergier de, 188. 

Havet, 194, 518. 

Hegel, 452. 

Heine, 75, 395, 447. 

Helvetius, C. A., 283, 329. 

Helvetius, Mme., 368. 

Henault, 283. 

Hennique, 430 n. 1, 487 n. 1. 



544 



INDEX 



Henri III et sa Cour (A. Dumas 

pere), 407. 
Henriade, La, (Voltaire), 290. 
Henriette Marechal (E. and J. de 

Goncourt), 429. 
Henry IV, 118 n. 3, 142 n. 2, 145, 

146, 153. 
Heptameron (Marguerite de Valois), 

148. 
Heredia, J. M. de, 445. 
Hermann and Dorothea (Goethe), 

356. 
Hernani (V. Hugo), 360, 389. 
Hervieu, P., 489-490. 
Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules 

(Bussy-Rabutin), 255. 
Histoire Ancienne, L', (Rollin), 268. 
Histoire Comique, etc. (Cyrano de 

Bergerac), 161. 
Histoire de Charles XII (Voltaire), 

291, 292-293, 309. 
Histoire de France (Michelet), 461. 
Histoire de Jenni (Voltaire), 304. 
Histoire de l'Academie (Fontenelle), 

273. 
Histoire de la Civilisation, etc. 

(Guizot), 459. 
Histoire de la Conquete de l'Angle- 

terre, etc. (A. Thierry), 458. 
Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise 

(H. Taine), 455. 
Histoire de la Revolution Fran- 
chise (Michelet), 461. 
Histoire de la Revolution Fran- 
chise (F. Mignet), 460. 
Histoire de la Revolution Fran- 

caise (A. Thiers), 460. 
Histoire de la Societe Frangaise, 

etc. (E. and J. de Goncourt), 429. 
Histoire de ma Vie (G. Sand), 405. 
Histoire de Port-Royal (Sainte- 

Beuve), 465. 
Histoire de Saint-Louis (Joinville), 

56. 



Histoire des Dues de Bourgogne 
(Barante), 458. 

Histoire des Girondins (Lamartine), 
370. 

Histoire des Institutions Politiques, 
etc. (Fustel de Coulanges), 461. 

Histoire des Origines, etc. (E. Re- 
nan), 453. 

Histoire des Treize (Balzac), 419. 

Histoire des Variations, etc. (Bos- 
suet), 240. 

Histoire du Consulat, etc. (A. 
Thiers), 460. 

Histoire du Peuple dTsrael (E. 
Renan), 453. 

Histoire du Romantisme (T. Gau- 
tier), 360. 

Histoire d'un Crime (V. Hugo), 378 . 

Histoire Generate, etc. (Guizot), 
459. 

Histoire Naturelle, etc. (Buffon), 
315-317. 

Histoire Veritable (Montesquieu), 
309. 

Historia Regum Britanniae (God- 
frey of Monmouth), 28, 30. 

Historians, 457^62. 

History of English Poetry (Court- 
hope), 48 n. 1. 

History of Philosophy (Schwegler), 
182 n. 3. 

Holbach, d\ 283, 284, 323, 329. 

Holbein, 72 n. 2, 110 n. 3, 446. 

Homer, 51, 136, 171, 345, 372. 

Homme a l'Oreille Cassee, L', (E. 
About), 412. 

Homme aux Quarante Ecus, L', 
(Voltaire), 303. 

Homme-Femme, L,' (A. Dumas 
fils), 477. 

Homme Machine, L', (La Mettrie), 
284. 

Homme Plante, L', (La Mettrie), 
284. 



36 



545 



INDEX 



Homme Qui Rit, L', (V. Hugo), 149 
n. 1, 376, 378. 

Honneur et F Argent, L', (Ponsard), 
483. 

Horace, 395. 

Horace (Corneille), 172, 173, 177-178. 

Housse Partie, La, (Bernier), 37. 

Huet, 213. 

Hugo, V., 149 n. 1, 159, 167 n. 2, 
360, 361, 369, 370, 372-381, 382, 
385, 385 n. 2, 389, 398, 421 n. 2, 
425, 447, 468, 479, 483, 484, 495, 
505. 

Hugues de Berzy, 45. 

Hume, D., 325. 

Humorists, 392-395. 

Huneker, J., 426, 490. 

Hutten, Ulrich von, 113. 

Huyghens, 287. 

Huysmans, 430 n. 1, 438-439. 

Iambes (A. Barbier), 400. 
Iambes (A. Chenier), 345. 
Ibsen, 488, 489, 490. 
Idees de Mme. Aubray, Les, (A. 

Dumas fils), 476. 
Idylls of the King (Tennyson), 28 

n. 2. 
Iffland, 332. 

II Filocopo (Boccaccio), 31 n. 3. 
II Pianto (A. Barbier), 400. 
II Vero Amico (Goldoni), 332. 
Iliad, 13, 213. 
Ille et Galeron, 34. 
Illusion Comique, L', (Corneille), 

170, 173. 
Immortel, L', (A. Daudet), 432. 
Imperia (Valmy-Boysse), 494. 
Impressions de Theatre (J. Lemai- 

tre), 416, 466. 
Impressions de Voyage (A. Dumas 

pere), 408. 
Impromptu de Versailles, I/, (Mo- 

liere), 219. 



546 



Inawertito, L', (Barbieri), 217 n. 1. 

Incas, Les, (Marmontel), 344. 

Inde sans les Anglais, L', (P. Loti), 
415. 

Indiana (G. Sand), 403, 405. 

Ingenu, L', (Voltaire), 303. 

Institution Chre'tienne (Calvin), 111, 
239. 

Interesse, L', (Secchi), 217 n. 2. 

Introduction to the Categories (Por- 
phyry), 182. 

Intruse, L', (Maeterlinck), 491. 

Inutile Effort, L', (E. Rod), 441. 

Iphig^nie (Racine), 199. 

Irene (Voltaire), 299. 

Isclo d'Or, Les, (Mistral), 449. 

Isolde, L', (R. Bazin), 443. 

Israel (Bernstein), 494 n. 5. 

Itin£raire, etc. (Chateaubriand), 
364. 

Ivanhoe (W. Scott), 457. 

Jack (A. Daudet), 431. 

Jacquerie, La, (P. Merim^e), 423. 

Jacques (G. Sand), 403. 

Jacques de Baisieux, 44. 

Jacques le Fataliste (Diderot), 331. 

James, H., 420. 

Janin, J., 463, 505, 507, 513. 

Jansenists, 188-193, 240. 

Jansenius, 188. 

Jardin de Berenice, Le, (M. Barres), 

441. 
Jasmin, 448-449. 
Jean de la Roche (G. Sand), 405. 
Jean de Meung, 11, 46, 49-54. 
Jean de Thommeray (E. Augier), 

480. 
Jean des Figues (P. Arene), 443. 
Jean the Gaul, 44. 
Jeanne D'Arc, 60 n. 1. 
Jeu de l'Amour, etc., Le, (Mari- 

vaux), 340. 
Jeu de la Resurrection, Le, 64. 



INDEX 



Jeu de Saint-Nicholas, Le, (J. Bo- 
del), 64. 
Jeu du Prince des Sots, Le, (Grin- 

goire), 70. 
Jeune Veuve, La, (Gautier le Long), 

36. 
Jeux Floraux, 134, 354, 380, 448. 
Jocelyn (Lamartine), 371. 
Jodelet ou le Maitre Valet (Scarron), 

160. 
Jodelle, 132, 140, 141. 
Johnson, 290. 

Joie de Vivre, La, (E. Zola), 435. 
Joie Fait Peur, La, (Delphine Gay), 

484, 505. 
Joinville, 25, 57, 144. 
Jongleur de Notre-Dame, Le, (A. 

France), 66 n. 1. 
Jongleurs, 15-18. 
Joseph of Arimathea, 29. 
Joubert, J., 244, 369, 452-453. 
Joueur, Le, (Regnard), 270. 
Joueur de Flute, Le, (E. Augier), 

479. 
Jouffroy, 450, 452. 
Journal des Goncourt (E. de Gon- 

court), 430. 
Joyzelle (Maeterlinck), 491. 
Judgment of Renart, 42. 
Jugement Dernier, Le, (Marshal), 

353. 
Juif Errant, Le, (E. Sue), 410, 506. 
Juives, Les, (R. Gamier), 140. 
Julia de Tr&ceur (O. Feuillet), 412, 

484. 
Julie ou la Nouvelle H£loise (J. J. 

Rousseau), 283, 324. 
Jullien, J., 487, 494. 
Junius, 399. 
Jussien, 280. 
Juvenal, 51, 400. 



Kabbala, The, 185 n. 11. 
Kant, 452. 



Karl Moor (Schiller), 393. 

Karr, A., 392, 394-395, 507, 513. 

Kepler, 185. 

King Lear, 37. 

Klopstock, 367, 386. 

Kock, P. de, 411. 

Koehler, Reinhold, 34. 

Kotzebue, 332. 

Kriloff (Krilov), 235 n. 4, 332. 

La Barre, de, 299 n. 1. 

La Baumelle, 293. 

La Bruyere, 123, 174, 219 n. 1, 

243, 255, 261-265, 266. 
La Calprenede, 166, 257. 
La Chaussee, N. de, 277, 341. 
La Condamine, 329. 
La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, 90 

n. 1. 
La Fayette, Mme. de, 155, 201, 

255, 257-258, 276, 278. 
La Fontaine, 38, 43, 45, 103 n. 1, 

129, 196, 197, 213, 214, 223, 225, 

231-237, 255, 345, 395. 
La Fontaine et ses Fables (H. 

Taine), 236. 
La Harpe, 234, 282, 284, 353. 
La Horla (G. de Maupassant), 438. 
La Mettrie, 284, 293. 
La Monnoye, B. de, 162. 
La Motte, A. de, 281. 
La Noue, F. de, 145. 
La Peruse, 140 n. 1. 
La Rochefoucauld, due de, 156, 

255, 258-260, 286. 
La Salle, A. de, 73 n. 1, 105. 
La-Bas (Huysmans), 439. 
Labe, Louise, 129. 
Labiche, 484. 
Lacepede, 316. 
Lacordaire, 451. 

Lady Tartuffe (Delphine Gay), 484. 
Lafcadio Hearn, 390, 414, 446. 
Lafosse, A. de, 266-267. 



547 



INDEX 



Lagrange-Chancel, 266. 

Lais, 27, 60. 

Lally, Comte de, 299 n. 1. 

Lamartine, 327, 361, 363, 369, 370- 

372, 381, 447, 448, 504. 
Lambert, Mme. de, 281. 
Lambert li Tors, 32. 
Lambin, D., 109. 

Lamennais, Abbe" de, 404, 450-451. 
Lancelot (Chrestien de Troyes), 27, 

28. 
Lancelot, C, 190, 196. 
Lanfrey, 461. 
Lang, A., 43, 134 n. 1, 303. 
Langue d'Oc, 5, 6-7. 
Langue d'O'il, 5-6. 
Lanson, G., 11, 46, 53, 75, 96, 167 

n. 2, 175, 176, 213, 215, 343, 345, 

487. 
Lanzi, 426. 
Lapidaires (Marbode, Bishop of 

Rennes), 47. 
Larivey, 141. 
Larousse, 106 n. 3. 
Larrotjmet, 202, 203. 
Lascaris, 106, 108. 
Launay, Mile, de, 281. 
Lavedan, H., 489. 
Lavinia (G. Sand), 403. 
Lavisse, E., 462. 
Lavoisier, 280. 
Law, J., 279 n. 1. 
Lazare (A. Barbier), 400. 
Lazare le Patre (Bouchardy), 484. 
Le Franc de Pompignan, 344. 
Le Houx, J., 94. 

Le Maistre de Sacy, 190, 191, 196. 
Le Notre, 254. 
Le Sage, 271-272, 340, 346. 
L'Estoile, 170. 
Lea (M. Prevost), 439. 
Leather-stocking Series (F. Cooper), 

363. 
Lebrun, C, 253-254, 255. 



Lebrun, Ecouchard, 269, 344, 371. 
Leconte de Lisle, 444. 
Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 282, 291. 
Lefevre, J., 381. 
LSgataire Universel, Le, (Regnard), 

270. 
L6gende des Siecles, La, (V. Hugo), 

379. 
Legendes ^piques, Les, (J. B^dier), 

18. 
Legislation Primitive, La, (de Bon- 

ald), 451. 
Legouve, E., 482. 
Legouve, J. B., 353. 
Legs, 45. 

Legs, Le, (Marivaux), 340. 
Leibnitz, 291, 292, 319, 402. 
Lejeune, le Pere, 239. 
Leha (G. Sand), 403. 
Lemaire de Belges, 103. 
Lemaitre, J., 96, 159, 340, 411, 440, 

463, 472, 477, 480, 489, 494, 514. 
Lemercier, Nepomucene, 335, 336, 

360 n. 2. 
Lemmercier, 253 n. 2. 
Lena, M., 66 n. 1. 
Lenient, 51. 
Leonardo da Vinci, 109. 
Leone Leoni (G. Sand), 342, 403. 
Lepreux de la Cite d'Aoste, Le, (X. 

de Maistre), 394. 
Lermontov, 363. 
Leroux, P., 404. 
Lescot, P., 253 n. 2. 
Lespinasse, Mile, de, 282. 
Lessing, 206 n. 1, 215, 332, 358, 

367. 
Letourneur, 277, 358. 
Lettre a l'Academie (Fenelon), 266. 
Lettre sur les Aveugles (Diderot), 

331. 
Lettre sur les Spectacles (J. J. 

Rousseau), 323. 
Lettres (G. de Balzac), 157. 



548 



INDEX 



Lettres (P. L. Courier), 399. 
Lettres (Mirabeau), 351. 
Lettres (Mme, de Stael), 366. 
Lettres (Voiture), 156. 
Lettres a l'Etrangere (Balzac), 422. 
Lettres a une Autre Inconnue (P. 

Merimee), 424. 
Lettres a une Inconnue (P. Meri- 
mee), 424. 
Lettres de Dupuis a Cotonnet (A. 

de Musset), 383. 
Lettres de Femmes (M. Prevost), 

439. 
Lettres de la Campagne (Tronchin), 

325. 
Lettres de la Montagne (J. J. Rous- 
seau), 325. 
Lettres de mon Moulin (A. Daudet), 

431, 432. 
Lettres d'un Voyageur (G. Sand), 

403. 
Lettres Persanes (Montesquieu), 

307, 309. 
Lettres Philosophiques (Voltaire), 

291. 
Lettres sur l'Histoire de France (A. 

Thierry), 458. 
Lettres sur la Musique Francaise 

(J. J. Rousseau), 320. 
Lettres sur le Roman de la Rose 

(Christine de Pisan), 54. 
L'Hospital, 119, 146. 
Li Parpaioun Blu (W. B. Wyse), 

449 n. 1. 
Life of Bertrand Du Guesclin, 56. 
Life of Saint L£ger, 1. 
Lingendes, le Pere de, 239. 
Linne, 280. 

Lion Amoureux, Le, (Ponsard), 483. 
Lionnes Pauvres, Les, (E. Augier), 

480. 
Lise Fleuron (G. Ohnet), 411. 
Literature Francaise au Moyen- 

Age (G. Paris), 34 n. 5. 



Littre, E., 452. 

Livre des Quatre Dames, Le, (Alain 

Chartier), 61. 
Livre du Peuple, Le, (Lamennais), 

451. 
Livre Rouge, Le, 280. 
Locke, J., 184 n. 3, 290, 402. 
Lockwood, M. C, 304. 
Loi de rHomme, La, (P. Hervieu), 

490. 
longepierre, 266. 
Longfellow, 448. 
Longtteville, Duchess of, 154, 155, 

157, 158 n. 1, 191, 192, 192 n. 1, 

260, 452. 
Loret, 503. 
Lorrain, Le, 255. 
Lorrains, Les, 20. 
Lorrein, 495. 

Loti, P., 414-415, 430, 443. 
Louis, 329. 
Louis IX, Saint, 10. 
Louis XI, 61, 70, 95 n. 1, 144. 
Louis XI (C. Delavigne), 389. 
Louis XIV, 150, 151, 159, 163, 164, 

181, 192, 196 n. 1, 198, 200, 201, 

202, 205, 209, 212, 213, 215, 239, 
| 240, 241, 244, 247, 249, 251, 252- 

255, 278, 279, 281, 289, 297, 

307. 
Louis XV, 279, 320, 331, 337. 
Louis XV (Due de Broglie), 462. 
Louis XVI, 339. 
Louis XVII (G. Frauchois), 494. 
Louis Lambert (Balzac), 418. 
Lourdes (E. Zola), 436. 
Lous Tresor dou F£librige (Mistral) 

449. 
Louys, 446. 
Loyola, I. de, 117. 
Lucie, etc. (G. de Bouhelier), 442. 
Lucrece (A. V. Arnault), 353. 
Lucrece (Ponsard), 483. 
Lucrece Borgia (V. Hugo), 373. 



549 



INDEX 



Ludwigslied, 14 n. 2. 
Lui et Elle (P. de Musset), 405. 
Lulli, 221, 268. 
Luther, 499. 
Lutrin, Le, (Boileau), 210. 
Luzan, 215. 

Lys dans la Vallee, Le, (Balzac), 
419. 

Mably, 402. 

Machiavelli, 425. 

Macrobius, 48. 

Madame Attend Monsieur (Meilhac 

and Halevy), 485. 
Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 427. 
Madame Caverlet (E. Augier), 480. 
Madame Chrysantheme (P. Loti), 

414. 
Madame Gervaisais (E. and J. de 

Goncourt), 429. 
Madame de Sommerville (J. San- 

deau), 406. 
Madame Sans-Gene (V. Sardou and 

Moreau), 473. 
Madame The>ese (Erckmann-Cha- 

trian), 412. 
Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle (A. Du- 
mas pere), 407. 
Mademoiselle de Maupin (T. Gau- 

tier), 390. 
Mademoiselle de la Quintinie (G. 

Sand), 405, 412. 
Mademoiselle de la Seigliere (J. 

Sandeau), 406. . 
Mademoiselle Fifi (G. de Maupas- 
sant), 438. 
Mademoiselle Guignon (A. Theur- 

iet), 414. 
Maeterlinck, M., 446, 487 n. 1, 

490-491, 493. 
Ma Grande (P. Margueritte), 441. 
Mahabharata, 13. 
Mahomet (Voltaire), 291, 292, 302. 
Maillard, O., 238. 



Maintenon, Mme. de, 146 n. 2, 159, 
201, 215, 287. 

Mairet, J., 166, 167. 

Maison de Penarvan, La, (J. San- 
deau), 406. 

Maison Neuve (V. Sardou), 472. 

Maison Tellier, La, (G. de Maupas- 
sant), 438. 

Maistre, J. de, 450. 

Maistre, X. de, 392, 393-394. 

Maitre de Forges, Le, (G. Ohnet), 
411. 

Maitres Sonneurs, Les, (G. Sand), 
405. 

Mattresses de Louis XV, Les, (E. 
and J. de Goncourt), 429. 

Malade Imaginaire, Le, (Moliere), 
223, 225. 

Malebranche, 268. 

Malfilatre, 344. 

Malgre* Tout (G. Sand), 405. 

Malherbe, 78, 129, 138-139, 152, 
153, 345, 357, 447. 

Mallarme, S., 445. 

Mallet, 329. 

Malleville, 129, 163. 

Malot, H., 411. 

Man in the Moon, The, (F. Good- 
win), 161 n. 3. 

Manette Salomon (E. and J. de 
Goncourt), 429. 

Manfred (Byron), 483. 

Manlius Capitolinus (Lafosse). 266. 

Mannequin d 'Osier, Le, (A. France), 
416. 

Manon Lescaut (PreVost), 341, 479. 

Mansard, J. H., 253, 255, 261. 

Maratre, La, (Balzac), 420. 

Marcabrun, 89. 

Mardoche (A. de Musset), 384. 

Mare au Diable, La, (G. Sand), 
405. 

Mar6chale d'Ancre, La, (A. de Vig- 
ny), 387. 



550 



INDEX 



Marguerite de Navarre, or de 

Valois, 45, 111, 130, 148. 
Margueritte, P., 430, 440, 441. 
Mari de la Veuve, Le, (A. Dumas 

pere), 407. 
Mariage d 'Argent, Le, (E. Scribe), 

482. 
Mariage de Figaro, Le, (Beaumar- 

chais), 339, 349 n. 1. 
Mariage de Victorine, Le, (G. Sand), 

335, 405. 
Mariage d'Olympe, Le, (E. Augier), 

479. 
Mariamne (Tristan l'Hermite), 166. 
Marianne (A. Hardy), 141. 
Marie de Champagne, 27. 
Marie de France, 27, 40, 70 n. 1. 
Marie Tudor (V. Hugo), 373. 
Marie-Therese (Due de Broglie), 462. 
Marini, 153, 154. 

Marino Faliero (C. Delavigne), 389. 
Marion Delorme (V. Hugo), 373, 

479. 
Marius a Minturnes (A. V. Arnault), 

353. 
Marivaux, 277, 281, 284, 340-341, 

346. 
Mark Twain, 101 n. 1. 
Marlowe, 65. 
Marmontel, 282, 284, 329, 344, 

398 n. 1. 
Marot, C, 54, 70, 96, 111, 129-132. 
Marot, J., 103, 130. 
Marquis de Letoriere, Le, (E. Sue), 

410. 
Marquis de Villemer, Le, (G. Sand), 

405. 
Marquis Ridicule, Le, (Scarron), 

216. 
Mars, Mile., 389. 
Marseillaise, La, (Rouget de Lisle), 

355-356. 
Marthe (Huysmans), 438. 
Martin, H., 462. 



Martin, J., 144. 

Martyrs, Les, (Chateaubriand), 364, 
457, 458. 

Mascaron, 239. 

Massenet, J., 66 n. 1. 

Massillon, 239, 245, 249-251, 275. 

Mathieu, 448. 

Mathilde (E. Sue), 410. 

Matteo Falcone (P. Merimee), 423. 

Matthews, Brander, 470, 473. 

Maupassant, G. de, 437^38, 515 
n. 2. 

Maupertttis, 277, 293, 294. 

Mauprat (G. Sand), 403. 

Mauvais Riche et le Ladre, Le, 70. 

Mauvaise Femme, La, 36. 

Maximes (La Rochefoucauld), 259. 

Maximes des Saints (Fenelon), 247. 

Maynard, 129, 139. 

Mazarin, 150, 151 n. 1, 253, 268, 
502. 

Mazarinade, La, (Scarron), 160 

Mazarinades, 151. 

Mechant, Le, (Gresset), 342. 

Medecin de Campagne, Le, (Bal- 
zac), 419. 

Medecin Malgre Lui, Le, (Moliere), 
38, 221. 

Medee (Corneille), 170. 

Medee (E. Legouve), 482 n. 1. 

Meditations Poetiques (Lamartine) , 
370. 

Meditations sur l'Evangile (Bos- 
suet), 243. 

Meilhac and Halevy, 424, 485- 
486. 

Meistersingers, 449 n. 2. 

Melanchthon, 499. 

Melanges, etc. (C. Nodier), 393. 

Melanide (La Chaussee), 341. 

Meleagre (Lemercier), 336. 

Meliador (Froissart), 60. 

Melite (Corneille), 169. 

Memoires, 144-147. 



551 



INDEX 



Memoires (Beaumarchais), 337, 338, 

340. 
Memoires (Commines), 56. 
Memoires (Pellisson), 251. 
Memoires (Mme. de Remusat), 462. 
Memoires (de Retz), 255. 
Memoires (Saint-Simon), 265-266. 
Memoires (Villehardouin), 56. 
Memoires de M. Joseph Prudhomme 

(H. Monnier), 412. 
Memoires d'Outre-Tombe (Chateau- 
briand), 365, 369. 
Memoires du Diable (F. SouliS), 410. 
Memoires d'un Homme de Quality, 

etc. (Prevost), 341. 
Memoires d'un M6decin (A. Dumas 

pere), 409. 
Memoires d'un Touriste (Stendhal), 

426. 
Memoires sur les Grands Jours 

d'Auvergne (Fleshier), 248. 
Menage, 218, 256. 
Menander, 218. 
Mendes, C, 444 n. 1, 445, 487 n. 

1, 515 n. 2. 
Menechmes, Les, (Regnard), 270. 
Mennechet, 168, 273. 
Menot, 238. 
Menteur, Le, (Corneille), 168, 173, 

216. 
Menus Propos, etc. (Toepffer), 394. 
Menzel, A., 284 n. 1. 
Meon, 54. 

Mer, La, (Michelet), 461. 
Mercadet, (Balzac), 420. 
Mercier, L. S., 335, 358. 
Mercier de la Riviere, 331. 
Mere Coupable, La, (Beaumarchais) , 

339. 
Merimee, P., 417, 423-424, 468. 
Merivale, 469. 

Merlin, 10 n. 1, 28, 29, 30-31. 
Merope (Voltaire), 291, 296, 301. 
Merrill, 446. 



Mes Haines (E. Zola), 435. 
Mes Plagiats (V. Sardou), 472 n. 1. 
Meschinot, J., 103. 
Messeniennes, Les, (C. Delavigne), 

388. 
Metamorphoses (Ovid), 48. 
Metenier, 487. 

M6tromanie, La, (Piron), 269, 342. 
Meunier d'Angibault, Le, (G. Sand), 

404. 
Michel, F., 21, 54. 
Michel Verneuil (A. Theuriet), 414. 
Michelet, J., 110 n. 3, 460-461. 
Microcosmographie (Earle), 263 n. 

1. 
Micromegas (Voltaire), 161, 291. 
Mignet, F., 460, 504, 518. 
Migration of the Fable, The, (Max 

Miiller), 34 n. 6. 
Millet, Abb<§, 80. 
Millot, 90 n. 1. 
Milton, 386, 402. 
Minerve Francaise, 144. 
Minnesingers, 449 n. 2. 
Mirabeau, 280, 350-352, 443 n. 1, 

503, 509. 
Mirabeau, the elder, 330, 351. 
Miracles, 64-68. 
Mirame (Richelieu), 170. 
Mirbeau, O., 430 n. 1, 494. 
Mirecotjrt, E. de, 410. 
Mireio (Mistral), 449. 
Misanthrope, Le, (Moliere), 212, 

220, 225-227. 
Miserables, Les, (V. Hugo), 376, 

377-378, 425. 
Miss Sara Sampson (Lessing), 332. 
Mistral, 447, 448, 449. 
Mithridate (Racine), 199. 
Modern Drama, 468-496. 
Modern Novel, 401-^16. 
Mois, Les, (Roucher), 346. 
Moliere, 36, 53, 72, 137, 155, 160, 

161, 168, 196, 197, 206, 209, 212, 



552 



INDEX 



213, 214, 216-230, 233, 236, 255, 
266, 270, 275, 287, 340, 358, 384, 
478, 485, 486. 

MOLINET, J., 103. 

Molinos, 242 n. 1. 
Mon Bonnet de Nuit (Mercier), 336. 
Mon Oncle Celestin (F. Fabre), 442. 
Mon Salon (E. Zola), 435. 
Monarchie de Juillet, La, (Thureau- 

Dangin), 462. 
Monde ou Ton S'ennuie, Le, (Pail- 

leron), 485. 
Mondor, 168. 
Moniot, 91. 
Monna Vanna (Maeterlinck), 490, 

491. 
Monnier, H., 412. 
Monologue, 105. 
Monsieur Alphonse (A. Dumas fils) , 

476. 
Monsieur de Camors (P. Feuillet), 

412, 484. 
Monsieur de Pourceaugnac (Mo- 

liere), 221. 
Monsieur et Madame Cardinal (L. 

Halevy), 486. 
Monsieur le Ministre (J. Claretie), 

442. 
Monsieur Parent (G. de Maupas- 
sant), 438. 

MONSTRELET, 60. 

Montagne, La, (Michelet), 461. 
Montaigne, 53, 118, 125-128, 144, 

161 n. 2, 402, 453. 
Montaigne (Dowden), 127. 
Montausier, due de, 156, 226. 
Montchretien, A. de, 140. 
Monte-Cristo (A. Dumas pere), 408, 

409. 
Montespan, Mme. de, 256. 
Montesquieu, 127, 246, 268, 276, 

277, 280, 281, 290, 306-315, 319, 

329, 349, 402, 461. 
Montesquieu (Barkausen), 308 n. 2. 



Montluc, B. de, 118, 144. 
Montpensier, Mile, de, 154, 255, 

259. 
Morale de Paris, La, (P. Adam), 443. 
Moralites, 68-70. 
More as, J., 446. 
Moreto, 219. 

Morgante Maggiore (Pulci), 26. 
Mort d'Abel, La, (J. B. LegouvS), 

353. 
Mort d'Agrippine, La, (Cyrano de 

Bergerac), 161. 
Mort d'Alexandre, La, (A. Hardy), 

166. 
Mort de C6sar, La, (Voltaire), 290, 

302. 
Mort de Pomp6e, La, (Corneille), 

173. 
Mort du Due d'Enghien, La, (Hen- 

nique), 487 n. 1. 
Morte d' Arthur, 31 n. 1. 
Morticoles, Les, (L. Daudet), 442. 
Moselly, E., 443. 
Motteville, Mme. de, 255. 
Mozart, 339. 
Muller, Max, 34. 
Muses Galantes, Les, (J. J. Rous- 
seau), 320. 
Musotte (G. de Maupassant and J. 

Normand), 438. 
Musset, A. de, 137 n. 1, 209 n. 2, 

361, 363, 370, 381-385, 392, 403, 

405, 406, 447, 468, 483, 484, 495, 

518. 
Myrrha (J. Lemaitre), 416. 
Mysteres, 64-68. 
Mysteres de Paris, Les, (E. Sue), 

411. 

Nabab, Le, (A. Daudet), 431. 
Namouna (A. de Musset), 3S2, 

383. 
Nana (E. Zola), 435. 
Nanine (Voltaire), 303. 



553 



INDEX 



Napoleon, 58, 267, 349, 350, 358, 
364, 366, 368, 400, 404, 407, 422, 
425, 426, 456, 457, 461, 473, 501, 
503, 504. 

Napoleon le Petit (V. Hugo), 378. 

Natchez, Les, (Chateaubriand), 362, 
363. 

Natural History (Pliny), 328 n. 1. 

Naturalistic Novel, 434-439. 

Neckek, Mme., 284, 318, 347, 366. 

Nennius, 27. 

Nettement, 400. 

Neveu de Rameau, Le, (Diderot), 
331. 

Newton, 290, 319. 

Nez d'un Notaire, Le, (E. About), 
412. 

Nibelungen, 13. 

Nicole, 190, 192, 196, 198. 

Nicomede (Corneille), 173. 

Nietzche, 441, 443. 

Nisard, D., 95, 464. 

NlTHARD, 3. 

Noces d'Attila, Les, (H. de Bor- 

nier), 483. 
Noces de Figaro, Les, (Lorenzo da 

Ponte), 339. 
Noctes Atticae (Aulus Geliius), 196 

n. 1. 
Nodier, C, 392-393. 
Nos Bons Villageois (V. Sardou), 

471. 
Nos Intimes (V. Sardou), 471. 
Nostradamus, J., 84. 
Notes sur l'Angleterre (H. Taine), 

455. 
Notes sur Paris, etc. (H. Taine), 

455. 
Notre-Dame de Paris (V. Hugo), 

376-377. 
Nouveau Dieu, Le, (P. Souchon), 

494. 
Nouveau Jeu, Le, (H. Lavedan), 

489 n. 1. 



Nouveaux Essais (P. Bourget), 440. 

Nouvelle H^loise, La, (J. J. Rous- 
seau), 52, 358. 

Nouvelles (A. de Musset), 382. 

Nouvelles (A. Dumas p£re), 407. 

Nouvelles GSnevoises (Toepffer), 
394. 

Novalis, 360. 

Novel of the Provinces, 442-443. 

Nuage Rose, Le, (G. Sand), 405. 

Nuits (A. de Musset), 382. 

Numa Roumestan (A. Daudet), 
432. 

Nyrop, 135. 

Oath of Strasburg, 1. 

Oberle, Les, (R. Bazin), 443. 

Occam, William of, 184. 

Odes (A. Chenier), 345. 

Odes Sacr6es (J. B. Rousseau), 269. 

Odes et Ballades (V. Hugo), 378. 

Odette (V. Sardou), 471. 

Odyssey, 13, 234, 246. 

(Edipe (Corneille), 173. 

(Edipe (Voltaire), 289. 

(Euvre, L', (E. Zola), 435. 

Ohnet, G., 411, 416, 494. 

Oiseau, L', (Michelet), 461. 

Oiseau BlessS, L', (A. Capus), 494 

n. 3. 
On Ne Badine Pas Avec L'Amour 

(A. de Musset), 382. 
Oncle Sam, L', (V. Sardou), 469. 
Or, L', (M. Magre), 494. 
Oraisons Funebres (Bossuet), 243. 
Oreste (Voltaire), 302. 
Orientales, Les, (V. Hugo), 378. 
Origines, etc., Les, (H. Taine), 456. 
Origins of French Poetry (Auber- 

tin), 25. 
Orlando Furioso (Ariosto), 26, 31 n. 

1. 
Orlando Innamorata (Bajardo), 26. 
Orme du Mail, L', (A. France), 416. 



554 



INDEX 



Oraement des Noces, etc. (Maeter- 
linck), 487 n. 1. 

Ornieres de la Vie, Les, (J. Claretie), 
442. 

Orphelin de la Chine, L', (Voltaire), 
296. 

Ortis (Foscolo), 363. 

Ossian, 386. 

Othello (Shakespeare), 354. 

Othon (Coraeille), 173. 

Pailleron, E., 485. 

Paix du Manage, La, (G. Courte- 

line), 488. 
Palissy, 118. 
Pamela (Richardson), 342. 
Pamphlet des Pamphlets (P. L. 

Courier), 399. 
Pantagruel (Rabelais), 117, 120- 

122, 393. 
Pantagrueline Pronostication (Rab- 
elais), 119. 
Pantchatantra (T. Benfey), 34 n. 

3, 39 n. 1. 
Papillotos, Les, (Jasmin), 448. 
Paradin, 145. 
Parallele des Anciens, etc. (Ch. 

Perrault), 212. 
Parents Pauvres, Les, (Balzac), 419. 
Parfaict, brothers, 69. 
Paria, Le, (C. Delavigne), 389. 
Paris (E. Zola), 436. 
Paris, Gaston, 7, 18, 19, 25, 30, 34, 

35, 44, 54, 90 n. 2, 96. 
Parisienne, La, (H. Becque), 487. 
Parnasse Contemporain, 444. 
Parnassiens, 390, 415, 444, 445, 

447, 455. 
Parny, 359. 
Parodi, A., 494. 
Paroles d'un Croyant (Lamennais), 

451. 
Paroles Restent, Les, (P. Hervieu), 

490. 



Pascal, B., 191, 193-195, 219 n. 1, 

252, 255, 402. 
Pasquier, E., 62, 119. 
Passion, The, (Arnold GnSban), 66. 
Passion of Christ, The, 1. 
Pastels, etc. (P. Bourget), 440. 
Pastourelle, 77. 
Pater, W., 424. 
Patrie (V. Sardou), 471. 
Patrie en Danger, La, (E. and J. de 

Gonconrt), 429, 487 n. 1. 
Patronne, La, (M. Donnay), 489 n. 

2. 
Patru, O., 157, 251. 
Pattes de Mouche, Les, (V. Sardou), 

472. 
Paul et Virginie (Bernardin de 

Saint-Pierre), 347, 348. 
Paulet, Mile., 156. 
Pauvre Diable, Le, (Voltaire), 303. 
Paysan Parvenu, Le, (Marivaux), 

340. 
Paysans, Les, (Balzac), 419. 
Peau de Chagrin, La, (Balzac), 418. 
Peche de M. Antoine, Le, (G. Sand), 

404. 
Pecheur d'Islande (P. Loti), 414. 
Pedant Joue, Le, (Cyrano de Ber- 

gerac), 161, 168. 
Peer Gynt (Ibsen), 488 n. 2. 
Pelerinage de Charlemagne, Le, 19, 

23. 
Pelleas et Melisande (Maeterlinck), 

491. 
Pellisson, P., 251. 
PensSes (Pascal), 193. 
Pensees Philosophiques (Diderot) 

331. 
Pentaur, 13 n. 1. 
Pere de Famille, Le, (Diderot), 332. 
Pere Goriot, Le, (Balzac), 419. 
Perrault, Charles, 212, 447 n. 1. 
Perrault, Claude, 253 n. 2, 255. 
Pertharite (Coraeille), 173. 



555 



INDEX 



Petit de Julleville, 45, 69. 

Petit Careme (Massillon), 249. 

Petit Chose, Le, (A. Daudet), 431. 

Petit Testament (F. Villon), 97. 

Petite Fadette, La, (G. Sand), 405. 

Petite Rogue, La, (G. de Maupas- 
sant), 438. 

Petites Cardinal, Les, (L. Halevy), 
486. 

Petrarch, 70 n. 1, 84, 88, 106, 367. 

Peur d 'Aimer, La, (G. Frejaville), 
494. 

PlLEDRUS, 43. 

Phedre (Racine), 199, 206, 209, 494. 
Philinte de Moliere, La, (Fabre 

d'Eglantine), 354. 
Philosophe Mari6, Le, (Destouches) , 

341. 
Philosophe Sans le Savoir, Le, (Se- 

daine), 335. 
Philosophe Sous les Toits, Un, (E. 

Souvestre), 412. 
Philosophers, 450-456. 
Philosophes Classiques, Les, (H. 

Taine), 455. 
Philosophic de l'Art, La, (H. Taine), 

455. 
Phyllis (P. Souchon), 494. 
Physiocrates, 330-331. 
Picciola (Saintine), 412. 
Pierre de Saint-Cloud, 32. 
Pierre l'Ermite, 238. 
Pierre et Jean (G. de Maupassant), 

438. 
Pilpay, 39 n. 1. 
Pinto (Lemercier), 336. 
Pio Rajna, 13. 

Piquillo Aliaga (E. Scribe), 506 n. 1. 
Piron, A., 269, 275, 277, 342-343, 

398 n. 1. 
Pixerecourt, 335, 484. 
Place Royale, La, (Corneille), 170, 

173. 
Plaideurs, Les, (Racine), 198, 251. 



Planche, G., 464. 

Planude, 234. 

Plato, 171, 185 n. 4, 233 n. 2, 293. 

Plautus, 218, 221 n. 2, 224 n. 2, 

228 n. 1. 
Playdoyer de la Simple, etc. (Co- 

quillart), 73. 
Pleiade, La, 109, 132, 137, 140. 
Plessys, M. de, 446. 
Plutarch, 128. 
Poe, E. A., 472 n. 1. 
Poema del Cid, 13. 
Poemes Antiques et Modernes (A. 

de Vigny), 386. 
Poesies Nouvelles (A. de Musset), 

382. 
Poissons, etc., Les, (Lacepede), 316. 
Politique Tiree de L'Ecriture Sainte 

(Bossuet), 240, 241. 
Polyeucte (Corneille), 173, 180. 
Pomone (Perrin and Cambert), 268. 
Pompadour, Mme. de, 279, 329, 

330. 
Ponsard, F., 483. 
Pontus de Thiard, 132. 
Pope, 215, 290, 402. 
Porphyry, 182. 
Porto-Riche, G. de, 489. 
Port-Royal, 188-193, 198. 
Port-Tarascon (A. Daudet), 432. 
Portraits Intimes, etc. (E. and J. 

de Goncourt), 429. 
Portraits Litteraires (Lamartine), 

372. 
Portraits Litteraires (Sainte-Beuve), 

465. 
Pot-Bouille (E. Zola), 435. 
Pour et le Contre, Le, (O. Feuillet), 

412. 
Pour et le Contre, Le, (Prevost), 

342. 
Poussin, 255. 
Pradon, 199. 
Prascovie, etc. (X. de Maistre), 394. 



556 



INDEX 



Precietjses, 152-158, 267, 278, 493. 

Pr6cieuses Ridicules, Les, (Moliere) , 
155, 218, 227. 

Pr&iecesseurs et Contemporains de 
Shakespeare (A. Mezieres), 359. 

Preface de Cromwell (V. Hugo), 167 
n. 2, 468. 

Prejuge a la Mode, Le, (La Chaus- 
s<§e), 341. 

Preliminary Discourse (d'Alem- 
bert), 328. 

Preraphaelites, 445. 

Presbytere, Le, (Toepffer), 394. 

Prevost, Marcel, 439. 

Prevost d'Exiles, Abbe, 277, 341, 
346, 479, 503. 

Princesse Aurelie, La, (C. Dela- 
vigne), 389. 

Princesse de Babylone, La, (Vol- 
taire), 303. 

Princesse de Cleves, La, (Mme. de 
La Fayette), 258. 

Princesse d'Elide, La, (Moliere), 
219. 

Princesse Lointaine, La, (E. Ros- 
tand), 91, 492, 493. 

Princesse Maleine, La, (Maeter- 
linck), 490. 

Prisonniers du Caucase, Les, (X. 
de Maistre), 394. 

Profession de Foi, etc. (J. J. Rous- 
seau), 323, 325. 

Promenades dans Rome (Stendhal), 
426. 

Proslogium (Anselm), 183. 

Provencale, La, (Regnard), 270. 

Provinciales (Pascal), 191. 

Psalms (Marot), 131. 

Psychological Novel, The, 440-441. 

Pucelle, La, (Chapelain), 157. 

Pucelle, La, (Voltaire), 303. 

Puget, 255. 

Pulchene (CorneiUe), 173. 

Pulci, 26, 383. 



Pushkin, 363. 

Pyrame et Thisbe (Theophile de 

Viau), 166. 
Pyrrho, 185 n. 8. 
Pythagoras, 185 n. 7. 

Quadriloge Invectif (Alain Char- 
tier), 61. 
Quarante Ans de Theatre (F. Sar- 

cey), 495. 
Quarrel of the Ancients, etc., 212, 

213, 266, 273. 
Quarrel of the Cid, 171. 
Quart d'Heure de Rabelais, 123. 
Quatre Evangiles, Les, (E . Zola) , 436. 
Quatre Fils Aimon, Les, 19. 
Quatre Vents de l'Esprit, Les, (V. 

Hugo), 379. 
Quatre-Vingt-Treize (V. Hugo), 376, 

378. 
Quenouille de Barberine, La, (A. 

de Musset), 382. 
Querelle des D6sesperes, La, (Ma- 

rini), 153. 
Quesnay, F., 330. 
Question d 'Argent, La, (A. Dumas 

fils), 477. 
Quietism, 242. 
Quinault, 268. 
Quinet, E., 16. 
Quitte Pour la Peur (A. de Vigny), 

388. 

Rabagas (V. Sardou), 471. 
Rabelais, 38, 45, 53, 60, 72, 103, 

113, 118, 119-124, 142, 236, 237, 

393, 399. 
Rabelais (Tilley), 124. 
Racan, 129, 139, 157, 166. 
Rachilde, Mme., 443. 
Racine, J., 129, 167, 190, 196-208, 

209, 211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 233, 

251, 255, 266, 267, 300, 345, 356, 

358, 468. 



557 



INDEX 



Racine, L., 200, 214, 277. 
Rafale, La, (Bernstein), 494 n. 5. 
Ramayana, 13. 
Rambouillet, Hotel de, 152-158, 

239, 278, 281, 288, 493. 
Ramuntcho (P. Loti), 415. 
Ramus, 110. 
Rantzau, Les, (Erckmann-Chatri- 

an), 412. 
Raoul de Cambrai, 20. 
Raphael (Lamartine), 372. 
Raynaud, E., 446. 
Raynouard, 80, 85. 
Rayons et les Ombres, Les, (V. 

Hugo), 379. 
Reali di Francia, 26. 
Realistic Novel, The, 417-433. 
Recamier, Mme., 369, 451. 
Recent Poetry, 444-449. 
Recherche de l'Absolu, La, (Bal- 
zac), 419. 
Remits des Temps Me>ovingiens (A. 

Thierry), 459. 
Recueil General des Fabliaux (A. 

de Montaiglon and G. Raynaud), 

34 n. 9. 
Red Book of Hergest, 28 n. 3. 
Reflexions, etc. (Turgot), 331. 
Reflexions sur Longin (Boileau), 

212. 
Reformation, 110-116. 
Reforme, La, (F. Mignet), 460. 
Regnard, 270-271, 275, 340. 
Regnier, H. de, 446. 
Regnier, M., 137, 142, 214. 
Reid, T., 452. 
Reinaert de Vos, 42 n. 1. 
Reine Coax, La, (G. Sand), 405. 
Reine Fiammetta, La, (C. Mendes), 

487 n. 1. 
Reine Margot, La, (A, Dumas pere), 

408. 
Reineke Fuchs (Goethe), 42 n. 1. 
Religieuse, La, (Diderot), 331. 



Religions et la Religion, Les, (V. 

Hugo), 379. 
Remarques sur la Langue Fran- 
chise (Vaugelas), 157. 
Remplacantes, Les, (E. Brieux), 

488. 
Remusat, de, 518. 
Renaissance, 105-116. 
Renan, E., 440, 453-454, 463, 465, 

466, 505, 518. 
Renard, J., 442. 
Renart le Contrefait, 43. 
Renart le Nouveau (Jacquemard 

Gelee), 43. 
Renaud de Montauban, 19. 
Renaudot, Theophraste, 502. 
Ren6 (Chateaubriand), 362, 363. 
Renee Mauperin (E. and J. de Gon- 

court), 429. 
Renouvier, 378 n. 1. 
Reponses a un Provincial (Bayle), 

273. 
Resseguier, 381. 
Retz, de, 255, 260-261. 
Reve, Le, (E. Zola), 435, 436. 
Reveries du Promeneur Solitaire (J. 

J. Rousseau), 327. 
Revolution dans les Mceurs, La, (E. 

and J. de Goncourt), 429. 
Revolutions de France, etc. (C. 

Desmoulins), 353. 
Rhadamiste et Zenobie (Cr6billon), 

267. 
Richard de Lison, 41. 
Richard Cosur de Lion, 80, 87. 
Richard Darlington (A. Dumas 

pere), 407. 
Richard Sans Peur, 33. 
Richelieu, 58, 158, 163, 170, 171, 

173, 190, 253, 260, 287, 387, 

502. 
Richepin, J., 446, 483, 495. 
Richeut, 35. 
Rimbaud, A., 446. 



558 



INDEX 



Rivoire, 494. 

Robe Rouge, La, (E. Brieux), 488. 
Robert le Diable, 33. 
Robespierre (V. Sardou), 472. 
Robin Hood, Tales of, 34 n. 1. 

ROCHEBLAVE, 385. 

Rod, E., 425, 426, 440, 441. 

RODENBACH, 446. 

Rodogune (Corneille), 173. 

Roi des Montagnes, Le, (E. About), 

412. 
Roi Louis, Le, 19. 
Roi S'Amuse, Le, (V. Hugo), 373. 
Rois en Exil, Les, (A. Daudet), 432. 
Roland, Mme., 284-285. 
Rollin, Ch., 268. 
Roman Bourgeois, Le, (Furetiere), 

162. 
Roman Comique, Le, (Scarron), 

160, 166, 390. 
Roman de Brut (Wace), 28. 
Roman de la Charrette (Chrestien 

de Troyes), 31 n. 2. 
Roman de la Rose (G. de Lorris 

and J. de Meung), 45, 48-54, 61, 

105, 116. 
Roman de Renart, 40, 116. 
Roman de Rou (Wace), 17. 
Roman de Troie (Benoit de Sainte- 

More), 32. 
Roman du Chaperon Rouge, Le, 

(A. Daudet), 431. 
Roman d'un Honn6te Femme, Le, 

(V. Cherbuliez), 413. 
Roman d'un Jeune Homme Pauvre, 

Le, (O. Feuillet), 411, 484. 
Roman Experimental, Le, (E. Zola), 

434. 
Romance of Cliges (Chrestien de 

Troyes), 29. 
Romance of Percevale (Chrestien de 

Troyes), 28. 
Romance of Victor Hugo, etc. (H. 

W. Wack), 380. 



Romanciers Naturalistes, Les, (E. 

Zola), 434. 
Romanesques, Les, (E. Rostand), 

492. 
Romanticists, The, 370-391. 
Rome (E. Zola), 436. 
Rondeaux, 60. 
Ronsard, 109, 129, 132, 133, 134- 

137, 141, 142. 
Roscellinus, 182. 
Rose et Blanche (G. Sand and J. 

Sandeau), 403. 
Rose-lise Chanteraine (A. Theur- 

iet), 414. 
Rosmersholm (Ibsen), 488 n. 2. 
Rosmonda (Rucellai), 140. 
Rosny, J. H., 430, 441-442. 
Rostand, E., 162, 444 n. 1, 446, 

483, 491-493. 
Rotisserie de la Reine P6dauque, 

La, (A. France), 416. 
Rotrou, 166, 168, 169, 171. 
Roucher, 346. 
Rouge et le Noir, Le, (Stendhal), 

175,425,426. 
Rougon-Macquart, Les, (E. Zola), 

435. 
ROUMANILLE, 448, 449. 
Round Table, 10, 27, 28, 29. 
Rousseau, J. B., 269-270, 280, 371. 
Rousseau, J. J., 52, 127, 246, 262, 

277, 283, 285, 300, 319-327, 329, 

346, 348, 349, 361, 402, 413, 503. 
Rousseau, Juge de Jean-Jacques (J. 

J. Rousseau), 327. 
Roussel, 111. 
Royal Cycle, 19. 
Royer-Collard, 450, 452. 
Rudel DE Blaya, 80, 90. 
Rutebeuf, 11, 44, 64. 
Ruy Bias (V. Hugo), 373. 



Sable, Mme. de, 156, 259. 
Sacy, Silvestre de, 34, 504, 505. 



559 



INDEX 



Sagesse et la Destined, La, (Maeter- 
linck), 491. 
Saint- Am ant, 162. 
Saint-Armand, 129. 
Saint-Bernard, 238. 
Saint-Bonaventure, 184. 
Saint-Cyran, 188, 190. 
Saint-Evremond, 161 n. 2, 268, 

287. 
Saint-Lambert, 343. 
Saint-Marc Girardin, 464. 
Saint-Pierre, Abbe" de, 297. 
Saint-Simon, 175, 245, 253, 255, 

261, 265-266, 420, 423. 
Saint- Vincent de Paul, 149, 239. 
Sainte-Beuve, 40, 125, 139, 194, 

256, 370, 381, 382, 394, 400, 406, 

423, 426, 464-465, 506, 516, 

518. 
Sainttne, 412. 
Saintsbury, 121, 143 n. 2, 225, 

398, 414, 447, 471, 473. 
Saisons, Les, (Saint-Lambert), 343. 
Salammbo (G. Flaubert), 427. 
Sales, Francois de, 239. 
Sallo, Denis de, 517. 
Salons, 281-285, 368-369. 
Salons (Diderot), 331, 334. 
Samaritaine, La, (E. Rostand), 492. 
Samson (Bernstein), 494 n. 5. 
Samuel Brohl et Cie (V. Cherbu- 

liez), 413. 
Sand, George, 327, 335, 342, 361, 

383, 385 n. 1, 401^06, 432. 
Sandeau, J., 403, 406, 480, 518. 
Sans Famille (H. Malot), 411. 
Sapho (A. Daudet), 432. 
Sarcey, F., 412, 463, 474, 489, 495, 

516. 
Sardou, V., 331, 468, 469-473, 478. 
Sarrazin, 129, 158. 
Satira Menippea (Varro), 142. 
Satire Menippee, 119, 142-144, 399. 
Satires (Boileau), 142, 209. 



Satires (R6gnier), 142. 

Saul le Furieux (Jean de la Taille), 

140. 
Saule, Le, (A. de Musset), 382. 
Sauvageonne (A. Theuriet), 414. 
Scarron, P., 129, 158, 159-161, 

216, 287, 390. 
Scenes et Comedies (O. Feuillet), 

412. 
Scenes Populaires (H. Monnier), 

412. 
Sceve, M., 129. 
Schelling, 360. 
Scherer, E., 465. 
Schi-King, 13 n. 1. 
Schiller, 260, 303, 360, 367, 393, 

410. 
Schlegel, Von, 360. 

SCHOLLE, F., 15. 
SCHROEDER, 332. 

Scipion (A. V. Arnault), 353. 
Scott, Walter, 219 n. 3, 230, 410, 

418, 457. 
Scribe, E., 389, 412, 481^82, 484, 

485, 506 n. 1. 
Scudery, 129, 168, 171. 
Scudery, Mile, de, 154, 158 n. 1, 

163, 257, 258, 259. 
Secchia Rapita, La, (Tassoni), 210, 

n. 1. 
Seconde Vie de Michel Teissier, La, 

(E. Rod), 441. 
Secret du Roi, Le, (Due de Broglie), 

462. 
Secretaire Intime, Le, (G. Sand), 

403. 
Sedaine, 160, 335-336. 
Semain, 446. 
Semipelagians, 189. 
Semiramis (Voltaire), 291, 296, 302. 
Senatjlt, le Pere, 239. 
Seneca, 62, 128, 140, 141. 
Sentiments de l'Acad6mie, 171. 
Sepet, M., 15. 



560 



INDEX 



Sept Cordes de la Lyre, Les, (G. 

Sand), 404. 
Sept Sages de Rome, 34. 
Sequence of Saint Eulalie, 1. 
Seraphine (V. Sardou), 471. 
Seraphita (Balzac), 418. 
Serge Panine (G. Ohnet), 411. 
Sericourt, de, 190. 
Serizay, 163. 
Serres, O. de, 118. 
Serres Chaudes, Le3, (Maeterlinck), 

446, 490. 
Sertorius (Corneille), 173. 
Servettjs, M., 112. 
Servitude et Grandeur Militaires 

(A. de Vigny), 387. 
Sevigne, Mme. de, 155, 190, 191, 

213, 244, 256-257, 278, 283, 

309. 
Seyssel, C. de, 95 n. 1. 
Shakespeare, 11, 96, 219, 290, 302, 

354, 357, 358, 372, 373, 402, 420, 

423. 
Shakespeare dans 1'Ancien Regime 

(Jusserand), 359. 
Shaw, G. B., 469, 470, 472. 
Sibylle (O. Feuillet), 405, 412. 
Siecle de Louis XIV, Le, (Vol- 
taire), 255, 293, 303. 
Sienkiewicz, 449. 
Sieves, Abbe, 352. 
Simon, 32. 
Simon, Jules, 514. 
Simple Discours (P. L. Courier), 

399. 

SlNGUN, 190. 

Sirven, 299 n. 1. 
Sirventes, 83. 

Sismondi, 82 n. 2, 85 n. 1, 87 n. 1. 
Socrates, 248, 286, 372. 
Sceur Beatrice (Maeterlinck), 491. 
Sceur Jeanne (G. Sand), 405. 
Sceur Philomele (E. and J. de Gon- 
court), 429. 

37 561 



Sceurs Vatard, Les, (Huysmans), 

438. 
Sofonisba (Trissino), 140. 
Soirees de Medan, Les, (E. Zola, 

Huysmans, etc.), 438. 
Soirees de Saint-P6tersbourg, Les, 

(J. de Maistre), 450. 
Somnambule, La, (E. Scribe and C. 

Delavigne), 389. 
Son Excellence Eugene Rougon 

(E. Zola), 435. 
Songe d'Enfer (Raoul de Houdan), 

48. 
Sophonisbe (Corneille), 173. 
Sophonisbe (J. Mairet), 166. 
Sophonisbe (Montchr6tien), 140. 
Sorbon, Robert de, 57 n. 2. 
Sorciere, La, (Michelet), 461. 
Sorel, 166. 
Sorel, A., 462. 
Soties, 68-70. 
Souchon, P., 494. 
Soulib, F., 406, 410. 
Soumet, 381. 

Sous l'CEil des Barbares (M. Bar- 
res), 441. 
Sous les Tilleuls (A. Karr), 395. 
Souvenirs, etc. (Mme. Lenormand), 

369 n. 1. 
Souvenirs d'Enfance, etc., 453. 
Souvestre, E., 412. 
Spectacle dans un Fauteuil, Un, (A. 

de Musset), 382. 
Spectator, The, (Addison), 277, 

309, 342. 
Spinoza, 305, 456. 
Spiridion (G. Sand), 404. 
Spiritual Exercises (Loyola), 117. 
Stael, Mme. de, 277, 284, 327, 360, 

361, 365-368, 369, 463, 503. 
Statique des V6g6taux (Hales), 315. 
Steele, 277. 

Stello(A. de Vigny), 387. 
Stemhowel, H., 70 n. 1. 



INDEX 



Stendhal, 175 n. 1, 417, 424-426, 

443. 
Sterne, 394. 

Stevenson, R. L., 376 n. 2, 408. 
Stewart, Dugald, 452. 

SUDERMANN, 488. 

Sue, E., 406, 410-411, 506. 
Suivante, La, (Corneille), 169. 
Sully, 119, 145. 
Sully-Prudhomme, 444. 
Sulpicius Severus, 2 n. 1. 
Supplice d'une Femme, Le, (A. 

Dumas fils), 477. 
Surena (Coraeille), 173. 
Surprise de rAmour, La, (Mari- 

vaux), 340. 
Suzanne (H. Greville), 413. 
swedenborg, 418. 
Swift, 161, 290, 497. 
Swinburne, 103, 104, 445. 
Symbolists, 445, 446. 
Symonds, J. A., 436, 486. 
Symons, A., 491. 
Systeme de la Nature, Le, (d'Hol- 

bach), 284. 

Tabarin, 168. 

Table de Marbre, 69 n. 2. 

Tacitus, 14 n. 1, 422. 

Taille, Jean de la, 140, 141. 

Taillefer, 17. 

Tailleur de Pierre, etc., Le, (Lam- 

artine), 372. 
Taine, H., 234,^236, 261, 385 n. 2, 

420, 426, 440, 454-456, 463, 465, 

518. 
Tales of Canterbury (Chaucer), 70 

n. 1. 
Tallemant des Reaux, 152, 239. 
Talliede, R. de la, 446. 
Talma, 266, 267, 389. 
Tancrede (Voltaire), 296, 302. 
Tartarin de Tarascon (A. Daudet), 

432. 



Tartarin sur les Alpes (A. Daudet), 

432. 
Tartuffe (Moliere), 220, 220 n. 1, 

225, 227. 
Tasso, 26. 
Tatler, The, 277. 
Tavan, 448. 
Tavannes, G. de, 145. 
Taverne des Etudiants, La, (V. 

Sardou), 471. 
Telemaque (Fenelon), 213, 246. 
Temple de Gnide, Le, (Montes- 
quieu), 309. 
Temple Enseveli, Le, (Maeterlinck), 

491. 
Tenailles, Les, (P. Hervieu), 489. 
Tencin, Mme. de, 282, 333. 
Tennyson, 28 n. 2, 385 n. 2. 
Tensons, 84. 
Tentation de Saint-Antoine, La, 

(Flaubert), 428. 
Terence, 218, 224 n. 2. 
Ter6sa (A. Dumas pere), 407. 
Terrasson, 281. 
Terre, La, (E. Zola), 435, 436, 437, 

439. 
Terre Promise, La, (P. Bourget), 

440. 
Terre Qui Meurt, La, (R. Bazin), 

443. 
Terres Lorraines (P. Moselly), 443. 
Thackeray, 432, 511 n. 1. 
Thais (A. France), 416. 
Theatre Anglais, Le, (Delaplace), 

358. 
Theatre Antoine (Theatre Li- 
bre), 416, 487-490. 
Theatre de Clara Gazul, etc., Le, 

(P. Merimee), 423. 
TheItre des Poetes, 494. 
Theatre Impossible, Le, (E. About), 

412. 
Theatre-Francais, see Com^die- 

Francaise. 



562 



INDEX 



Thebaide, La, (Racine), 197. 

Theocritus, 345. 

Theodora (V. Sardou), 471. 

Theophile, 129. 

Therese Raquin (E. Zola), 435, 

486. 
Thermidor (V. Sardou), 472. 
Theuriet, A., 413-414, 443, 446. 
Thiebaut IV, 87. 
Thierry, A., 8, 61, 458-459, 518. 
Thiers, A., 350, 460, 504. 
Thomas, 30. 
Thou, de, 119, 145. 
Tieck, 360. 

Tocqueville, A. de, 481, 504. 
Toepffer, R., 392, 394. 
Tolla (E. About), 412. 
Tolstoy, 488. 

Tombeor de Nostre Dame, Le, 66. 
Tosca, La, (V. Sardou), 472. 
Toto Chez Tata (Meilhac and Hal- 

€vy), 485. 
Tour de Nesle, La, (A. Dumas pere), 

407, 408. 
Tour du Monde, etc., Le, (J. Verne), 

413. 
Touroulde (Theroulde), 21. 
Toussaint, 329. 
Toute Seule (A. Theuriet), 414. 
Tragedie du Nouveau Christ, La, 

(G. de Bouhelier), 442. 
Tragiques, Les, (A. d'Aubigne), 

142, 148. 
Traite de la Connaissance de Dieu, 

etc. (Bossuet), 240, 241. 
Traite des Etudes (Rollin), 268. 
Traite des Flexions (Newton), 315. 
Travail (E. Zola), 436. 
Travailleurs de la Mer, Les, (V. 

Hugo), 376, 378, 379. 
Tresor des Humbles, Le, (Maeter- 
linck), 491. 
Trilby, etc. (Ch. Nodier), 392. 
Tristan de Leonnais, 28. 



Tristan le Roux (A. Dumas fils), 
475. 

Tristan and Yseult (Wagner), 30. - 

Tristram Shandy (Sterne), 331. 

Trogus Pompejus, 2 n. 1. 

Trois Cceurs, Les, (E. Rod), 440. 

Trois Contes (Flaubert), 428. 

Trois Mousquetaires, Les, (A. Du- 
mas pere), 408, 410. 

Trompeur Puni, Le, (Scudery), 168. 

Troncons du Glaive, Les, (P. and 
V. Margueritte), 441. 

Trophees, Les, (J. M. de Heredia), 
445. 

Troubadours, 90-91. 

Troubadours and Trouveres (H. W. 
Preston), 85 n. 1. 

Trouveres, 15-18. 

Turcaret (Le Sage), 271-272. 

Turenne, 243, 248, 256. 

turgenieff, 421. 

Turgot, 329, 331. 

Turlupin, 169. 

Turnebe, Odet de, 141. 

Typhon ou la Gigantomachie (Scar- 
ron), 160. 

Tyrt^eus, 388 n. 1. 

Uhland, 447. 

Un Beau Mariage (E. Augier), 480. 

Un Cheval de Phidias (V. Cherbu- 

liez), 413. 
Un Client Serieux (G. Courteline), 

488. 
Un Homme Libre (M. Barres), 441. 
Un Mariage sous Louis XV (A. 

Dumas pere), 407. 
Un Pere Prodigue (A. Dumas fils), 

477. 
Une Chaine (E. Scribe), 482. 
Une Evasion (Villiers de LTsle- 

Adam), 487 n. 1. 
Une Page d'Amour (E. Zola), 435, 

436. 



563 



INDEX 



Une Vie (G. de Maupassant), 438. 
University of Paris, 58, 183. 
Uranistes et Jobelins, 157. 
Urfe, H. d', 153. 

Vacquerie, 478. 

Vair Palefroi, La, 35. 

Valcreuse (J. Sandeau), 406. 

Valentine (G. Sand), 403. 

Valvedre (G. Sand), 405. 

Vapereau, 393, 417. 

Vase liltrusque, Le, (P. Merimee), 

423. 
Vaugelas, 153, 157, 251. 
Vaux de Vire, 93. 
Veillee de Vincennes, La, (A. de 

Vigny), 335 n. 1. 
Venice Preserved (T. Otway), 266. 
Ventre de Paris, Le, (E. Zola), 

435. 
Venus d'llle, La, (P. Merimee), 423. 
V6pres Siciliennes, Les, (C. Dela- 

vigne), 389. 
Verite" (E. Zola), 436. 
Verlaine, P., 445. 
Verne, J., 161, 413. 
Vernon, P., 443. 
Verre d'Eau, Le, (E. Scribe), 482. 
Vert-Vert (Gresset), 342. 
Vetter, H. J., 123 n. 1. 
Veuve, La, (Corneille), 169, 173. 
Viatj, ThSophile de, 161 n. 2. 
Vicar of Wakefield, The, (Gold- 
smith), 486. ' 
Vicomte de Bragelonne, Le, (A. 

Dumas pere), 408. 
Vie d'Henriette d'Angleterre (Mme. 

de La Fayette), 258. 
Vie de J6sus (E. Renan), 453. 
Vie de Marianne (Marivaux), 340. 
Vie de Saint- Alexis, 15. 
Vie de Saint-Thomas de Cantorbery 

(Gamier de Pont Sainte-Max- 

ence), 55. 



Vie Litte>aire, La, (A. France), 415, 

466. 
Vie Privee de Michel Teissier, La, 

(E. Rod), 441. 
Vie des Abeilles, La, (Maeterlinck), 

491. 
Viele-Griffin, 446. 
Vies des Dames Galantes (Bran- 
tome), 146. 
Vies des Hommes Illustres, etc. 

(Brantome), 146. 
Vigny, A. de, 335 n. 1, 361, 370, 

381, 385-388, 398, 445, 468, 518. 
Vilain Mire, Le, 38. 
Vilain Qui Conquit Paradis, etc., 

Le, 36. 
Villehardouin, G. de, 25, 56. 
Villemain, 8, 59, 61, 82, 248, 266, 

275, 290, 308, 310, 311, 457, 464, 

518. 

VlLLEROI, 145. 

Villon, F., 73 n. 1, 92, 95-104, 

129, 214, 381, 445. 
Vinet, A., 324, 464. 
Vingt Ans Apres (A. Dumas pere), 

408. 
Virelais, 60. 
Virgil, 136, 160, 345. 
Virgile Travesti (Scarron), 160. 
Visconti, 253 n. 2. 
Vishnu-Sarma, 234. 
Visionnaires, Les, (Desmarets de 

Saint-Sorlin), 216. 
Vceux d'un Solitaire, Les, (Bernar- 

din de Saint-Pierre), 348. 
Voie du Paradis, La, (Raoul de 

Houdan), 48. 
Voiture, 129, 152, 156, 212, 239. 
Voix Interieures (V. Hugo), 379. 
Voleur, Le, (Bernstein), 494 n, 5. 
Volney, 329, 368. 
Voltaire, 52, 53, 127, 161, 163, 191, 

204, 210, 236, 249, 255, 267, 269, 

270, 275, 277, 280, 283, 286-305, 



564 



INDEX 



309, 310, 313, 318, 322, 323, 327, 

329, 334, 335, 340, 342, 349, 358, 

468. 
Volucraires, 47. 
Voyage a l'lle de France (Bernar- 

din de Saint-Pierre), 347. 
Voyage au Centre de la Terre (J. 

Verne), 413. 
Voyage Autour de ma Chambre (X. 

de Maistre), 394. 
Voyage Autour de mon Jardin (A. 

Karr), 395. 
Voyage de M. Perrichon, Le, (La- 

biche), 485. 
Voyage en Orient (Lamartine), 372. 
Voyages en Zigzag (Toepffer), 394. 

Wace, 17. 
Wagner, 30. 
Walpole, H., 282, 283. 
Wakens, Mme. de, 319, 320. 
Wasps, The, (Aristophanes), 198. 
Watteau, 430. 



Weber, Von, 360. 
Weiss, J. J., 427. 
Wells, B. W., 426, 462. 
Werther (Goethe), 324, 358, 363. 
Wieland, 358, 367. 
Wilhelm Meister (Goethe), 1C?. 
William of Orange, 19. 
William of Poitiers, 85-86. 
Willy, 442. 

WlNCKELMAN, 424. 

Ysopets, 39. 

Yvain, 28. 

Yvette (G. de Maupassant), 438. 

Yvon, 329. 

Zadig (Voltaire), 291, 303. 
Zaire (Voltaire), 296, 300-301. 
Zayde (Mme. de La Fayette), 257. 
Zeno, 185 n. 10. 
Zola, E., 424, 426, 430, 433, 434- 

437, 438, 440, 441, 442, 455, 486, 

514, 515 n. 1 and n. 2. 
Zulime (Voltaire), 296. 



(1) 



THE END 



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